Power vacuum. Cottage Living is out. Billed as a magazine for "relaxed living" with guiding muses such as "comfort," "simplicity," "style," Cottage living is too relaxed for us. Crossed between Good Housekeeping and Martha Stewart Living, Cottage aims to teach you how to perform successful makeovers and add style where it is lacking....but it is lacking all over the magazine.
Perhaps we are not the right audience? Cottage is aimed at those living in houses (read suburbs) and may not be meant for snotty New Yorkers. Fine, but if they want "simple" and "style," they could at least clean up their busy graphic design and hot red lipstick font colors, and evoke the modesty and impact of the cottages they are after.
Next up is Breathe Magazine (we missed the launch party last week), which promises to "understand your desire to go deeper, to find balance and meaning while living in this material world." We shall see. It has more of a young, hip Vanity Fair spin, with a young, hip famous person on each cover. Bring it on.
...And then Domino next year. Conde Nast is launching their newest member of the Lucky, Cargo family in 2005, which promises to just tell us how to shop, shop, shop. Forget living. MGR
Martha Page Count (how badly is Martha shrinking):
Martha Stewart Living
161
Cottage Living
293
Real Simple
345
Elle Decor
281
InStyle (for comparison)
552
My mother bought Cottage Living and it was awful. And I probably live in their target market. Modesto is not known for cutting edge style, but come on. One can only stand so much country casual and florals. Martha was better, and I hated Martha.
MGR: Thanks for acknowledging the role graphic design plays in supporting these mags' themes and successes (or not). The design of the piece itself has been one reason why Martha DOES get it right. Her mags SWEEP any publication design competitions they enter...
So I guess I need to stop wearing hot red lipstick around the cotage? Drat.