Launch: Port magazine + Shortlist Mode

Gorkana alerted me earlier this week to the forthcoming launch of a new upmarket quarterly men's mag called Port. First issue is due out in March.

The proof of the pudding will be in the editing but the video trailer doesn't excite me - Port is selling itself as an 'intelligent' style mag for men yet the most prominent endorsement on the trailer is from Jon Snow, who thinks refusing to wear a poppy to honour our war dead when presenting Channel Four News is clever. GQ already gives me a monthly mix of style and good stuff to read - I'll pass on Port.

I'm rather more excited by the launch of Shortlist's latest spin-off - also a mens style mag and also launching in March. Shortlist Mode will appear to coincide with the spring/summer and autumn/winter collections in 2011, with a free circulation of 250,000. Good luck with that one guys - the Shortlist team has yet to produce a dud product and this one sounds like another winner to me.

Cover of the Week: Sunday Times magazine 19/12



Copyright: The Sunday Times

 I love the simplicity and boldness of this cover. We've all probably manipulated an image of a computer mouse at some point to make a feature opener for a story about something more prosaic (online shopping being the obvious one) but I've never seen a bolder execution than this. The cover photography is by Mindaugas Komskis - a new name to me.

Great headline - Generation XXX - and there's something about the pink background that adds an extra hint of creepiness to the cover.

Radio Times - Christmas issue deja vu



Christmas really wouldn't be Christmas for me without the double issue of the Radio Times. I must have used one every year since the early 70s to plot my viewing and still adopt an 'advent calendar' approach to it, refusing to jump ahead to check the layout of the Christmas Day listings until the night before. There has always been something hugely appealing about the artwork that decorates the listings pages for the big days of Christmas and I'll savour them again this year, even as I struggle to find anything decent to watch.




Copyright: Radio Times

The cover of the Christmas double issue has iconic status, befitting not only the role in plays in the festive season for many of us, but also the huge circulation  boost the RT gets at this time of year (the Christmas issue is by far the best selling issue of the year). So I make no apology for quibbling about this year's offering (pictured left). Viewed in isolation, it's a classic heartwarmer featuring Wallace and Gromit. But doesn't it look just a tad familiar?



 

Copyright: Radio Times

Check the cover of the Christmas issue from 2008 (right) - while I appreciate that there are only so many ways you can feature a cartoon dog and his master on a mag cover, the 2010 version does bear a striking similarity to the RT offering of just two years ago. Of the two, the 2008 cover feels the stronger and better constructed image. I really like the details here - Wallace reading the Christmas issue he is starring in and the sinister penguin lurking at the window.

(Even odder - having now scanned my 2010 Christmas Radio Times from cover to cover, I can't find any trace of a new Wallace and Gromit film being screened this year that would justify their appearance on the cover. Sloppy...)

Cover of the Week: Esquire (Spain) Dec 2010

It's hard to be a racing driver and not look cool - even harder if you drive for Ferrari. But Fernando Alonso pulls it off. In a pit lane packed with babes and babe magnets, the sulky Spaniard resolutely refuses to conform and continues to sport the sort of haircut most of us abandoned in our early teens.

That creates something of a problem for Andres Rodriguez, Editor of Esquire's Spanish edition. If you are editing in the UK and get some studio time with Lewis Hamilton you can pretty much do anything you like with him and you know you'll get a cover shot out of it. But Fernando is clearly a different kettle of fish.

The solution? Get Nicolas Guerin to shoot him head and shoulders with his eyes shut in black and white and then rotate the image through 90 degrees (see left). This is great work.

Launch: National Geographic Traveller

I picked up the launch issue of National Geographic Traveller last night from a newsstand in Charlotte Street (the one sponsored by Monocle). I've enjoyed the look, feel and content of this mag in its original US incarnation for several years so was looking forward to seeing how the UK edition would stack up, both against the original and against its main UK rivals, the divine Conde Nast Traveller and Sunday Times Travel.

The cover has the familiar National Geographic yellow frame (on all four sides - not two as shown in this image) but the mag is a large format than the US original. The UK one is 285mm x 220mm (same size as CN Traveller). Not convinced this was a good idea - sticking with the smaller format would have been an easy way to differentiate NG Traveller (surely the yellow frame guarantees newsstand visibility regardless of the size of the mag?).

The launch issue runs to 180 pages (£3.85) compared to Conde Nast's 184 pages (£3.90) and Sunday Times Travel's 164 pages (£3.70) - again, you have to ask how hard they were working here to pinch readers on launch. Surely there was room for a special price deal on issue one? That said the subs offer is spectacularly cheap - £9.60 for six issues V Conde's £24 for 12.
   You would expect photos in any National Geographic mag to be spectacular. In issue one of Traveller they come up short of that for me - 'good but not great' is where I would rate them (and a clear step down from the imagery in Sunday Times Travel), which seems odd given the organisation's long heritage and the quality of the imagery in its US mags.

The other thing you would pretty much take for granted is a team of writers who had lived and breathed their landscape before putting pen to paper. In that context, this description is just plain daft:

 'As a Londoner I saw Kent as a no-man's land of scrubby marshes dotted with pylons and sheep - somewhere that had to be got through to go on holiday via the Channel Ports.' If you think Kent is a barren wilderness, my friend, I'd suggest life as a travel writer may not be for you.

In terms of typography, CN Traveller is streets ahead of the new National Geographic mag and has the edge on ST Travel in my view. Will be interesting to see how newsstand sales go, but I can't see NG Traveller outselling either of its two main newsstand rivals on this showing.