Take a look at the first page of this promotional piece we produced in early 1997 to alert the planet that a new automation magazine from Putman Publishing was about to launch.

You can make out the magazine logo in the image here, and see that the working title for this magazine was CONTROL for the OEM.

During the developmental stages, it seemed to make sense to leverage the goodwill that Control had engendered during its first five years. Many of the suppliers that Control worked with had interests in discrete manufacturing or had other divisions that did.

However, it didn’t mean too much to a new audience, since the machine builder readership we sought to develop didn’t have much to do with process automation.

We rather quickly realized that we had to stake out our own identity, and not be thought of as the cute, young sibling guided by its smart, big sister through early years. If you were the youngest of two or more kids in a family, you know what a rollercoaster ride that can be.

So we changed the name, we created a new logo for the cover, and off we went. "Control Design for Machine Builders." Not much gray area there.