Cover of the Week: Gardener's World, March 2011 issue

So Gardener's World is 20 years old - I can remember the panic in the office I was working in at the time when news of its imminent launch filtered out. I was working on a homes mag at the time so wasn't going to be affected, but the guys working alongside me on a marginally successful gardening mag were definitely not happy.

I've always felt that the way BBC plugged its own mags to death on air at launch was wrong and made otherwise mediocre products into market leaders purely by dint of the free publicity they received. There is no way, for example, that Gardener's World at launch was as good as the Emap's Practical Gardening, which despite its title was the most beautiful gardening mag every produced in the UK in my view and was at its best in the mid-90s.

It's editor at the time was the scary Adrienne Wild. I made a complete hash of an interview for a job with her back in the 90s - I arrived sleep deprived after a very late night in Liverpool watching football and was miles off the pace under 'Wild fire'. Shame - though their offices in Peterborough had to be just about the ugliest publishing HQ I've ever seen.

Anyway, I digress. The point of this post is to praise the cover of the 20th birthday issue, which was really leaping off the shelves at me from 10 yards away this morning in my local M&S. White space is a rare commodity indeed on a gardening magazine cover and this was a brave decision by art editor Guy Bennington. With Alan Titchmarsh guest editing this issue, the temptation to use a big pic of the insufferably smug Mr T must have been huge. Credit to Guy for resisting the obvious solution and going instead for the graphic option.

The Ride magazine

Happiness is discovering a magazine that makes you think 'I would love to edit this'. The Ride is the first mag this year to make me feel that way. Massive respect to hugely talented brothers Philip (editor) and Andrew (art director) Diprose at Own It! for their creation. Andrew will be known to many of you already as the art director of the awesome Wired UK edition.

Philip kindly gave me the lowdown on the magazine earlier this week shortly after issue five went on sale - here's what he had to say (this is a multi-part post so please read all parts to get the full story!):

So why launch a new magazine?
 'The Ride Journal came from a couple of friends who wondered if we could do something a bit different to the cycling magazines that were out there. We’d been riding long enough to not need to read about this season’s new bike, where we should ride or who'd won the last race. Instead we wanted something which concentrated on the riders themselves, something that told the stories they had to tell. Personal, human, passionate. Bikes have changed people’s lives in so many ways and we wanted to gather a small selection of these tales.

How did the first couple of issues come together?

'With the following issues we had something we could show to people. We could let them see where there work would appear, and who they would appear alongside. We also started getting emails from people who wanted to be featured in the journal.

'Once the seed was sown we spread the word to people from all across the globe. Initially we wondered if it was just us who wanted to see such a journal; evidently we were wrong. From all kinds of riders we began to get favourable responses. People asking why this hasn’t been done before and how they could join us? A snowball effect took place and what was planned to be 80 pages soon grew into the beautiful monster sized journal. To begin with we thought it would be a one off, and put in everything we had but as soon as it was out people were asking about issue two.

We’ve never been in this to make money, just to give something back to the world of cycling. And to help give back a little more we donate all profits from the journal to a variety of charities. It makes it easier to ask a photographer or writer to donate their work for free when you can tell them you’re not making a penny yourself.  But we never sell the journal as a “charity” magazine, we’d hate for someone to buy it for any reason other than the great stories and stunning visuals.

'It's usually about 8 months between issues but there is no set time. We only print when we are ready, which is the joy of a non-commercial magazine. We have as little advertising as possible (only to nearly cover printing costs) and are able to chose a size and paper stock that would normally be commercial suicide. I’m always surprised at how long it takes to get the issue completed. I think its like buying a house, by the time the issue is out I’ve forgotten how much work it took and it seems like a good idea to start on the next one.'

Cover of the Week: Wired UK, March 2011 issue

Only five weeks into a new year and I'm raving about a Wired UK cover for the second time already in 2011. As so often in the world of Wired, highly-talented editor David Rowan has been grappling with a cover concept that has no obvious visual to bring it to life.

This month it's privacy and the subject of how much to share (or not) online is tackled in three outstanding essays inside the mag.

The cover David has come up with (image left) has a fabulous 3D quality to it, the face of the reader ripped off to reveal the main coverline - 'Your Life Torn Open'. I'm a big fan of coverline symmetry (I'm borderline OCD and think this spills over into my work at times!) so I really dig the four supporting coverlines positioned on the corners of the main image. Way to go Mr Rowan...

A limited number of copies of this issue have personalised covers featuring personal details culled from the web about the mag subscriber receiving it (image right). I'm really intrigued by personalised covers and would like to bring this approach to my own mag in 2011 if the right opportunity arises but I can see a fair number of readers getting freaked out by this if we step over the line.

Cover of the Week: Shortlist 27/1/11

Well it didn't take Shortlist long this year to grab a Cover of the Week award. This has to be the most impressive launch in the mens magazine market in the last 5+ years and continues to amuse and delight me on a regular basis.

Tragically for commercial reasons, it came hidden beneath a wrap around ad spread for an instantly forgetable film (see? I've forgotten what it was already...), but all self-respecting editors and designers will rip that off to display the mag the way its rather talented art director Chris Deacon intended.

What's to like here? Well there's the boldness of the concept, the use of Elton's glasses in the 'O' and the brilliant coverline 'Elton John. Exclusive interview. Need we say more?' to name but three.

But there is something else going on here which I think we can all learn from. Fact is Elton these days aint looking his best - wrinkles and wigs are not a great combo, no matter how famous you are - so a pic of the man as he looks today is not going to cut any mustard. Use a pic of him from 30 years ago and you're undermining the impact of having a brand new interview.

Instead Deacon has taken a step back from his mac and said: 'You know what - to get maximum impact on the cover from our Elton John interview, let's NOT use a picture of Elton John. Let's do it another way.'

Genius.

Eat Me - tastier than Jamie?

No way will food culture mag Eat Me (now on its fourth issue) outsell the celeb endorsed Jamie, but I think it's a stronger and more likeable product from a purely editorial perspective.

There's none of the self-congratulatory back slapping and crass attempts to sell you a JO endorsed salt and paper grinder set here. This looks and feels like a mag that is being written and produced by an editorial team that is doing it for the love of it. The editor is Max Wilson and his background in graphics and design are obvious on every page.

The Heston cover shoot by Ben Ottewell is a good 'un, as is the one with Nuno Mendes by Alexander Missen.

One grumble - it's followed Jamie down the matt paper route, which seems odd. To me, the pictures in Jamie invariably look cold and way too black thanks to the paper - the last thing you want from food photography.

Good luck to the Eat Me team - it won't be easy to make money from this mag but it deserves to survive.

Cover of the Week: Wired, February 2011 issue

I'm not sure at what point Wired took over from Wallpaper* as the magazine most likely to be found on designers' desks in my office, but it is well and truely established now as the mag most likely to get name-checked when we are discussing new ways to tell old stories. It's also become the first mag I choose to take with me on a long train journey.

The UK launch wasn't 100% commercially successful - it only hit its circulation target of 50,000 in the Jan-Jun '10 ABCs by giving away 10,000 copies a month (20% of its total circulation!) - but far be it from me to slag off a UK publisher trying to launch a newsstand mag during the current recession. It isn't easy, as we all know and Wired is a great read.

I haven't loved every one of their covers, but I think this one is a cracker. I get plenty of very visual subjects to play with on my covers but for David Rowan at Wired, more than half of his cover stories feature concepts that it is next to impossible to illustrate.

This month it's 'social commerce' - how big business is trying to flog stuff to you and your mates via Facebook. Hardly the easiest of concepts to bring to life.

Instead of attempting something literal - and lame - the art team have gone for a very bold graphic cover with not one but three headlines explaining the story. I also like the fact that they've dropped the 'launch of the year' flash a lot earlier than many other mags would have done. Fair play to David Rowan and team.

Cover of the Week: Tatler, February 2010 issue

OK, so Warhol-style images have been done a million times before on covers and elsewhere, but this one is the perfect example of 'right person, right time'.

There was obviously an element of luck here but to produce this cover on the day Kate and Wills announced details of their wedding (on Twitter - why???) was a fantastic bit of work by Tatler. It not only got great standout on the newsstand but was also picked up and reproduced all over the news media to illustrate the story about Kate using a car not a carriage to get to the Abbey (shock horror...).

It was clearly a brave decision to go down this road - it's a million miles away from the usual Tatler covers - and was a clever solution to the obvious problem anyone is going to have producing an original cover featuring Kate Middleton - she isn't going to be agreeing to any exclusive magazine photo shoots any time soon.

The graphic art was by David Newton. Haven't had the pleasure of working with David yet but he has a great list of magazine clients, including Wired and Esquire so feels like a guy my picture editor should be speaking too.