New design for Creative Review

I'm tempted to buy the latest edition of Creative Review as it has had a re-design. "with a new size, new paper, new typography and, yes, a new logo". Also, the cover illustration is by Anthony Burrill, whose work I like. Not certain I like the typography for the logo, but we'll see...

I don't buy the magazine, or any design magazines really, that often. Mainly because a) they're expensive b) I read the blogs and bits online, and c) we have them all in a journals room at university.  However, there's nothing like having your own copies of the magazines to flick through.

"We knew that we needed to make the printed magazine even more distinct from the website. It had to be more tactile, more of a joy to handle, better quality. But finding the resources to do that is not easy in the face of a recession that has affected advertising, and therefore paginations and revenues, so badly.

We discovered that changes to the Royal Mail’s pricing structure meant that, by reducing the size of the magazine slightly to 250mm square we could save money. Which is all fine but not worth doing if the smaller format doesn’t feel right. So we had some old copies of the magazine cut down to the new size and found that it really worked. It felt good in the hand.

Then, we thought, what if we took the money that we would save from the size reduction and put it (and more) into the paper stocks. So instead of 90 gsm, the text pages are now on 135 gsm with Crit on 115 gsm uncoated. Instead of 250gsm, the coverstoack is now 300gsm. The thickest, best paper CR has never been on. Despite the mail cost saving, we are now spending more money per month on the production of the magazine, but we believe that our readers will appreciate the result – the pictures here don't do it justice. You have to pick up a copy to really appreciate what a difference the new paper makes."

And so, I think I have been persuaded to go out and buy a copy.
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/march/cr-april-redesign