Well, the definition of comely is ‘good looking’ or ‘attractive’, and this new magazine by Adeline Media certainly ticks those boxes.
oh comely (keep your curiosity sacred) is a strange publication however. Cover lines are scribbled, layouts are minimalist, capital letters are banned and features tend to be written in the first person by interesting folk who have had strange jobs, and plenty to say about them. The website says the magazine is about “people, their quirks and creativity”. And although it all looks beautiful, there just seems to be something missing. I flicked through the pages and most of it was pleasing to the eye, but I couldn’t help thinking the content was unsustainable and without direction. However, I do like the idea that the magazine seems to have been put together by a bunch of enthusiastic individuals, who have really given the magazine a tone of voice. They will have their followers.
On the eve of the World Cup final we couldn’t not have a football related post could we? Football Punk has passed me by a bit, and this is issue 8. I was aware of Golf Punk though, which blazed onto the scene a few years ago and rightfully shook up the elitist world of golf, mainly through their innovative fashion pages. Football Punk though? It doesn’t really need punking does it? Seems Golf Punk was bought out last year, and Football Punk was deemed a good idea by the new owners.
Anyway, this issue came with a couple of other mags – a retro World Cup special and a World Cup betting guide – oh and a poster of Wayne Rooney (to throw darts at). Nuff said.
So another men’s magazine closes. Maxim, which, to be honest, I won’t miss much – has closed in the UK. However, it still continues to sell 2.5m copies in the US, and has franchises in other countries such as China, India and France. I found only one copy in my archives – it dates from 2000 – around the height of the lads’ mag boom, but it is pretty dire, and I am surprised it held on for so long. I can’t even bring myself to put the cover up here. The image above is the launch issue from 1995 – edited by Gill Hudson – now editor of Radio Times
The digital version of the magazine will continue we are told – and I guess that is the way things are going anyhow. In this YouTube culture, you can access pretty much anything you want immediately, so waiting a month for a printed magazine to hit the shelves seems pretty redundant.
Esquire have produced, for their 75th anniversary edition, an e-ink cover. This implementation does little for me other than to send a shiver with dread down my spine as I contemplate the prospect of whole racks of distractingly animated flashy magazines driving the onlooker to temporary insanity.
Animated banners are annoying on the web. They’ll be even more annoying if unsympathetically shoehorned into printed media so let’s think carefully about where we want to go with this kind of technology, okay?
