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Cheaper. More info on the page equals “perceived value”. I’m sure the decrease in page counts due to lack of advertising is also involved somehow.

‘Creative use of white space is about as realistic as a banker’s bonus,’ says editor Lindsay Nicholson in the Guardian.

That might be the editor’s opinion, but I doubt that you’d never hear that sentence come from the art director’s mouth.

if advertising is down and the content is being crammed onto less pages, isn’t the mag going to look thinner, and therfore possibly be perceived as being of less value?

i’d love it if they declared war on bad cover design instead – the tonal values of the cover title and background are way too similar to stand out on the shelf, even if you have 20/20 vision and perfect lighting. I doubt this is going to jump out at anyone casually scanning the shop shelves.

Would be nice to see some tearsheets as well as the cover to see how the internal layout works.

White space? Pah! ‘Fill the space’ was the best advice I ever got.

I’ve been thinking about this recently as our books are thinning. For me, we’re in the conundrum of having already paid for a bunch of stories and wanting to get them all in. Do we push in the same amount of material in order for the magazines not to look like we’ve cheapened the content? Do we take out stories to free up more space but lessening the amount of stories? We’re in such a different space than we were a year ago that I feel like I don’t know anymore.

In this situation, though, I feel like that means “we’re going to have more blurbs, sidebars, and junk filling the space for our ADD readers to make it look more like a webpage.”

There’s white space and there’s white noise. Cramming too much onto a page actually goes against the reader actually wanting to engage with the magazine. Working out where to start is like trying to find an odd sock in a sock draw.

Well, I’m curious to see this re-design. I’ll look for this magazine in Brazil. But, I suppose that it is just to be cheaper and not fail.

thats a tricky subject … a magazines main purpose is to convey information, and the design is conveying that information in the best possible way. So if cramming the content in hinders this, then I would say it’s cutting corners in costs, not helping make the magazine more ecological.

But then design is all about working within restraints and problem solving. I good designer should be able to work within the confines of limited space and still deliver a result that works and looks good.

I picked this up today and the cover actually looks really good.
The logo and matching pink coverlines are in fact a nice bright “bubblegum” pink not the flat looking drab pink we see in the image here.
Inside pages look good too, very clean, great typography, easy to navigate and pictures are treated with respect.
Has anyone seen what Good Housekeeping used to look like?? An absolute design disaster!
I’m very impressed with the new design.

The “ecological” angle is a sweet bit of post-rationalisation. If they’re really that concerned about the title’s environmental impact, shouldn’t they be moving to FSC-certified stock, soy inks and water-based glues? The new cover looks a lot like a late-80′s Cosmo, so at least they’ve demonstrated some willingness to recycle.

The cover colours are not presented well here, cause I am shore that the logo is in some pantone pinky colour…
Although I dont think that mags should look bad if its filled with information. If its designed well it can be ok.
But as Cat commented above I also think that this whole story is related to advertising decrease.

Is this linkage a joke? PUNK’d? Where’s the hidden cameras? I cannot believe a debate about Good Housekeeipng on this site.

NEXT WEEK: Angling Times vs Jacques Derrida: Discuss

You go outside to cool down for five minutes… and some condescending twat in the tent questions the validity of debating the major redesign of a ‘mainstream’ magazine. Have seen the new look GH and white space or no white space it is a huge improvement on what it used to look like. In my experience a little white space goes an awfully long way, and unless you are an ‘art’ magazine, people tend to want their magazines filled with great pictures and good reads… I’m going outside now…I maybe some time…

Less is bore.

So good design should be limited to “cool” magazines? Personally I’m not keen on that cover – the type is a bit bland – but we can’t all work for Love or Flaunt (or whatever the latest hip rag du jour is) you know.

I’ve heard this argument of magazine makers since 15 years “we have to be more ecological” “printing on paper is bad for nature” and it never sounded convincing or believable to me. Its a cynic lie most of the time , at the best its naive. Do they really believe what they say. 99,99 % really dont care about ecological reasons, thats stuff magazine and fashion people like to say when its fashionable. They care about economics (and design, as they should)

I forgot to say – the design look like a CATASTROPHY! Ok good Housekeeping is not a design title but thats exactly the problem – it looks still trashy and cheap with a little bitsy modern design in colour and typo. Sorry for me this is the worst of the worst, I even prefer the trashy-commerical-nodesign atall-look to something like this. I think design like that is far too polluting to our social environment and wellbeing. Companies should first work well withing their discipline (meaning making a pleasent looking, warm and modern good house keeping magazine) and then they can start throwing their eco-friendly posing around.

Main headline looks not quite centered, or is that dress effecting my eyes!

Hey, it’s just the cover… and it’s the editor speaking not the designer. Seems to me like their are far more pretentious arses on this site than there should be. Anybody with a genuine interest in magazines appreciates old-school classics like Good Housekeeping through to the esoteric low-brow delights as covered by ‘Colophon’. The cover looks good. This magazine was overdue a design update. Let’s look forward to seeing what John Tennant has done throughout?

A magazine cannot be judged on universal design principles. Does it work for the market it is aimed at? Has it met the brief set by the editor? Do the readers like it?
By the way, Angling Times sales went up by 16% after relaunch last year and the art editor won Bauer’s designer of the year!

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