Sandro Boeri is named Creative Adviser of the Focus brand, a system consisting of six monthly, 2 bi-monthly and 2 quarterly titles, two websites and a range of special editions.

Over the years Boeri has developed – along with the editorial teams – a new way of transmitting knowledge: a simple, yet authoritative, interesting and often entertaining approach, able to translate the most cryptic specialist jargon into information accessible to everyone.

Focus has proved to be a highly effective medium reaching across all social and cultural levels, and opening up the so-called elitist world of culture and science.

Under the guidance of Boeri, who has been the editor in chief since 1995, the monthly has reached a readership of 6.4 million, making it the most widely read magazine in Italy (10.7% of the population), with a website over 513,000 unique users and 10.6 million page impressions.

“Focus today is no longer just a magazine but a cross-media knowledge centre,” says Boeri, who will leave the editorship of the monthly next June. “And it is in this area that I will continue to make a contribution to the development of the brand in all its possible forms: from education to new media, from events to smart-TV, from images to words, games, art, economics and science.”

Francesca Folda will be the new Editor in Chief of Focus and www.focus.it, and will also oversee the brand extensions Extra, D&R and Brain Trainer.

Folda, born in Rome, and not yet forty, built her career in Milan where she attended journalism school in 1995. Folda has accumulated in a short time a wealth of expertise, on different subjects and media, at news agencies and newspapers, television and the web. She was a reporter for ANSA and has been a columnist for several newspapers, before joining the magazine Panorama in 1999, where she produced reports from the world and journalistic investigations that also led to the award of the Saint Vincent prize in 2000. Since 2007 she has successfully explored the world of digital journalism, first on Panorama.it and then at Sky.it. In the last four years she edited the online portal of Sky Italia, where she also had management responsibilities. Under her leadership Sky.it unique users tripled and the number of page views and advertising revenues multiplied.

“Francesca Folda – whose career fits perfectly with the innovative character of Focus – will be responsible for the continued growth of both the magazine and the website by leveraging the value of the brand, the know-how of the editorial staff and the strength of community, paying particular attention to the originality and quality of content,” underlined Fabienne Schwalbe, CEO of G+J/M. “The new role of Creative Adviser to be held by Sandro Boeri, meanwhile, is linked to the overall development strategy of the Focus brand across all media, concentrated on its core values: to spread knowledge in an easy, accessible, attractive and authoritative way,” Schwalbe concluded.

The Gruner + Jahr / Mondadori joint venture, established in 1990, publishes Focus, Italy’s most widely read magazine, and its brand extensions Focus Junior, Focus Storia, Focus D&R, Focus Brain Trainer, Focus Pico, Focus Wild, Focus Storia Biografie, Focus Storia Wars and Focus Storia Collection. Completing the publisher’s portfolio are the monthly magazines Jack and Geo, and the portal nostrofiglio.it, market leader in online Parenting.