Approaching football in a way that blends whimsy, intelligence, humour and style is nothing new – When Saturday Comes, Nick Hornby and others were doing it decades ago. But the very arty Spiel, sent in our regular lucky bag from Stack Magazines, is taking it to a new level.

A detailed account of the sport’s part in the often bloody history of Algeria is intriguing, though it’s a shame it only takes us up to 2001. There’s a great celebration of Brighton’s revival and an amusing account of an attempt to learn Italian by following a lowly team called Pro Vercelli – though the photos and illustrations facing the latter’s text have no apparent relevance to it.

Any fule kno that football was first played with a pig’s bladder – but Spiel actually tries it, which is rather admirable. Less welcome is a slightly daft poster on how to play conkers – it fails to hit the target.

TheWeather was sent to me back in September 2010, and I blogged about it then as I was so impressed that a magazine could be created from a subject so British. In fact, it’s us Brits that talk about the weather, but of course it affects the whole world – and that is what gives this magazine such huge appeal.

So they’re back, having hatched a deal with Haymarket, and with a punchier, more commercial looking front cover. The paper stock’s changed too, from that lovely recycled uncoated to a house silk. Still, those things aside, it is packed to the gunnels with content. Some of it identical to the launch issue (Colin Jackson interview to name but one). It weighs in at 132pp while the launch issue was a mere 68. It has adverts too, but they are all a bit thin on the ground and niche. Prime back cover position goes to the Weather Shop in East Sussex.

The design hasn’t altered much, and I do like a lot of it – the colour palette, the great use of images and the commissioned illustrations – however, the type can go from the sublime to the ridiculous at times, and it’s almost as though the pages are being proofed on screen (as opposed to being printed out at 100%). Witness the comment pages where the body copy has to be 14pt – so much for the design evolving.

Love the interview with Magicseaweed founder Ben Freeston (I am a fan), the behind the folklore pages are interesting, and Colin Jackson and Kate Humble give the mag celeb appeal. But in general, TheWeather hasn’t quite found its pace yet. What I mean is (and this could be due to the dearth of adverts), the magazine doesn’t flow very well. I said it was packed with content, and it may be there is too much. In the ‘weather front’ section, there are two spreads on folklore, two celebrity interviews, and three Q&As, peppered generously with facts and figures to keep you going for a few weeks. Comment comes next, followed by the features, all backing onto one another without the respite of the odd advertisement. Also, all interviews and features set direct quotes in italic text within the body copy – which makes for a bitty and disjointed read (personally).

Launch issue news pages

Latest issue news pages

Not that I’m complaining. I love seeing new magazines on the market, and the fact that TheWeather is proudly going to the newsstands is even more of an unusual thing in these times.

Go on, don’t just talk about the weather – read about it too.

New copies of Scotland Outdoors magazine have just landed and we’re delighted by how this issue has turned out and love the cover image kindly supplied by Woodland Trust Scotland.

If you’re a UK-based fan of the Scottish outdoors – and particularly if you have kids - we strongly recommend you pick up a copy at your nearest stockist.

In the era of the always-on, always-connected, never-sleeping, cloud-syncing, at-your-fingertips media, the one thing all of us print heads can agree on is that a physical magazine – considered, planned and committed to ink and paper – offers a rare opportunity to disconnect and lose oneself in a moment of calm. Nothing is updating live before our very eyes. There are no shifting RSS sands and when you pick it up tomorrow, it will be the same thing it was today.

This unhurried state of affairs is at the heart of Delayed Gratification. Forget the deadlines, forget up-to-the-minute, let’s think about all this for a while. Then let’s think some more and when we’re done, let’s write something about it all.

The magazine comes out quarterly and we received the January-March issue which was delivered to CMYK acres courtesy of the rather splendid Stack Magazines service – if you haven’t signed up, then why the devil not?

Throughout the magazine, the design is elegant with headlines and icons set in Clarendon and a strictly limited colour palette which lets the wonderful infographics, in particular, really shine. A fussy riot of elements would really have undermined the theme so I’m glad to report design and editorial are working very nicely together.

On the subject of graphics, the mag opens with one of the nicest contents pages I’ve seen in a long while with subjects mapped out as underground lines running through zones representing each of the three months the title covers. It’s not a world-changing idea but it’s perfectly executed and requires no head scratching to work out what’s going on.

Flicking momentarily back to the cover, it features artwork by Hassan Massoudy and, in keeping with the magazines thoughtful approach, a full spread is devoted to an interview with the artist – a far cry from most magazine covers whose job is to grab the attention and hold very little interest beyond that.

As you might expect from a digested news mag, the range of subject matter is pretty wide-ranging. Subjects run from the Keys/Gray debacle on Sky TV to a renegade ice cream maker to cosmic evolution. There are a mixture of ‘full fat’ features and ‘in brief’ morsels which, at first might seem to run against the theme of the mag but which provide essential balance to stop things getting too hefty and also give a sense of orientation as they run through the monthly timeline. The writing is, of course, well informed and very engaging too. I never really found my attention drifting off despite there being plenty worth looking at!

Each month gets it’s own section and these all kick off with a grand old infographic – January concerns itself with government spending cuts, February with global twitter trends and March with lyrical themes in pop songs.

As a designer, I’m personally more drawn to the more graphic-heavy spreads. My favourite moment in the mag is the feature on soap opera mortality rates – it seems 2006 was veritable bloodbath!

Advertisements are very much conspicuous by their absence. This is a more and more common trend among niche titles who are opting out of the ad-funded model. There is some credibility in this plan – with the range of free magazines having rapidly expanded on the ad-funded model, consumers have been faced with a wave of reworked press releases and anaemic commissioned features tainted by concessions to advertisers. I should add that I don’t believe all freebies conform to this model – some are excellent – but by goodness there are a lot which do.

This means, at first glance, a pretty high cover price – £12 a pop – but with all effort being expended on entertaining the reader not placing product, you get a lot of meat for your money and the gamble is that this gains you a loyal readership who see the value. Effectively the response to being undercut is to go upmarket.

Others have written in much more detail about this so I won’t go into it any further but it’s an interesting development to observe.

All in all the Slow Journalism Company have done a great job and Delayed Gratification is a highly recommended read. I can’t wait to see what they do next…

I am a sucker for magazine launches (not too many of those around just now), and the hype surrounding this publication promised it to be intelligent, witty and stylish.

The double whammy was I had just taken possession of an iPad the same week, and so was able to flick through the physical magazine and also the free digital version!

I can’t help but compare Port to Intelligent Life (produced by the Economist – very first entry on this blog). You know – lovely stock, gold foil blocked masthead, no prices on the fashion pages. Certainly, editor Dan Crowe sums it up in his foreword: “this is a truly international affair, playing to our own tune”. With big names like Jon Snow, Daniel Day-Lewis and Will Self all contributing to the first issue, let’s hope they can keep it up.

To sum up the print version:

Love the illustrations on Secret City. Commentary is nice the way pieces run on to the middle of the pages and headings are understated. Bold in-yer-face white out of black openers to features (on the right). Bookending the coated with the uncoated stocks. Great typography. All that lovely white space. Thank you.

Ipad version:

Now let it be said that this was my first ever encounter with a magazine on an iPad – so I really was not too sure what to expect. At the very least I expected to be able to find my way from start to finish just like the printed counterpart. Our good friend Jeremy Leslie  (someone who knows his way around an iPad) over at magCulture was instrumental in helping to create this version, and it is truly simple and functions perfectly.

Those wobbed feature openers have words that burn in slowly while images present themselves on pages one by one. The commentary pages differ only in that there is no need to run the text on on the iPad, so each story gets its own space. If you get disoriented at any time then tapping the screen brings a navigation bar up at the bottom of the screen so you can get to where you want. Oh, and did I mention you can only view pages in portrait mode?

I even tried reading a feature right through to see if my eyes got tired at all, and I confess they didn’t, though the font did look a wee bit furry on the screen.

So it’s a big thumbs up to Port for now at least, and let’s hope they can maintain their high standards. Intelligent Life used to have foil blocking on their early covers, but no sign of that now…

Another lovely vintage magazine from 1960, called Arizona Highways. I guess they don’t get much snow down there, so the cactii (and candles) serve as the festive cover.

What makes this magazine so fascinating though, is not the kitsch photography, but the fact that whoever owned the magazine before us, had been sent it by a friend who had written all over the pages! Serving as a kind of magazine/postcard, each page has a personalised caption scribbled on in fountain pen.

They wish their friends in Scotland a Merry Christmas, and point out things like “our church” and “a Joshua tree – don’t try to climb it!” Above, they mention a “Lost Dutchman Mine” in Superstition Range. Obviously, they were keen for their Scottish friends to visit Arizona. I wonder if they ever did.

The inside back cover reveals “A Cowboy’s Christmas Prayer”. Brilliant stuff.

Merry Christmas everyone!