Times What’s Up?!: It’s cool…!

Do you remember one of my older reviews about ‘Which? Right Choice’ magazine? It was quite an unusual kind of magazine to help consumers to make buying decision by providing them purely editorial perspective and unbiased verdicts on variety of consumer products and services. The USP of WRC is that they don’t accept any single advertisement or advertorial or sponsored feature (not even for the covers) to put in the magazine to ensure its positioning in readers mind that this magazine is absolutely editorial driven, not the advertisements.

Now ‘Times What’s Up?!’ is recently launched magazine by Times Of India group which is also in the same genre but interestingly it is just opposite to WRC in terms of content. TWU is merely a compilation of advertorials and promotional features except of very editorial articles. A very unique proposition and solves fairly its purpose to help consumers to in buying.

CONTENT
It is also mentioned in the TWU’s tag line that it focuses on consumer durables, IT and ITES segment. It contains all the advertorials and promotional features in the form of editorial pages. For a (consumer) reader, it serves its good purpose as it helps him to know about the product, the technology, the concept, the usage, the application of any featured product.

But the catch in this kind of content is that readers cannot absolutely rely on such information to make a firm decision to buy a product because most of the articles have no specialist or editorial credibility, they are just advertorial pieces from the companies’ mouth.

Content of magazine is well structured in various sections and articles are written in very short and crisp manner. The cover story only goes up to 4 pages; else every story is wrapped up in one or two pages maximum. Despite that, articles are structured and have several extra info boxes and hooks that make the magazine a content-thick and interesting read.

DESIGN 
After a long time I have gone through a magazine which has a good design in terms of creativity and discipline. As it was necessary for this kind of genre, it has got lots of design elements in the magazine. Every page has some fix and variable elements but everything seems placed thoughtfully and in the discipline. Hence, entire magazine when you flip through cover to cover, it looks beautiful and create interest to read it.

Cover, I feel, is little cluttered and not impressive for this genre of magazines which can be tweaked further. Also, for some reason, the launch issue was carrying ‘What’s Up’ as its masthead but second issue has ‘Times What’s Up?!’.

Inside pages are designed pretty well as they have consistency in using elements yet creative. Except a few places where things are placed or treated inconsistently, otherwise all the pages look good.

PRINTING
As most of the content is promotional features and are sponsored material, it could be justified only if they were printed well. In order to achieve this it is taken care brilliantly and printing is come up very impressive. Images are perfectly sharp, clear and skin colors are just perfect. It has got detailing in almost every photograph so all I can say that pre-press and press has done their job well.

PRODUCT
Again, since it has lots of sponsored material, to make it look better, it has got good quality of thick paper for inside pages and even thicker page for the cover which is then laminated to give it a richer look. Monthly issue of 52 pages is priced at Rs50 which if you look at its product quality and the reasonably good content, it seems pretty fine. Even it has made of higher GSM paper, but it has 48 pages only plus 4 pages of cover, that is not sufficient enough to make it as a perfect bound magazine with a spine, hence it is centre-pinned product which does not feel bad in slightly tall in size. Because of condense presentation, it looks quite content heavy but it should have more pages to accommodate more articles to feed a reader as a monthly periodical.

As I mentioned, it is a special and probably the first of its kind of magazine. But, I liked because it is put together well.

You might feel that my review of TWU is also paid or sponsored but trust me, I have never taken a single penny for my reviews in last seven years and I promise that my ‘VIRDI’ct will never be sold for any amount. That is why I can write my unbiased feedback on the publication which is helpful for the publishers to improve their magazines.

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Gorgeous Looks: Not looking even average

Pratishtha Publication has recently launched this bi-monthly title – ‘Gorgeous Looks’ with the tag line of ‘The Health, Beauty and Lifestyle Magazine’. Now, each one of these three areas from the tag line are so wide and broad that you need to be very careful to decide your boundaries and scopes for the coverage and lifestyle, as I see, is the most misused genre in magazines publishing. Anything which does not fit into any category, that somehow gets a seat in lifestyle category. Exactly same is the variety (?) of content when you go through the issue of GL. You actually get lost and forget what kind of magazine you are reading by the way.

CONTENT
GL is a vaguely structured magazine which tries to feed its reader every taste from the kitchen. It covers health, beauty, travel, fashion, interior, portfolio, spaces, jewellery, shopping, celeb-talk, wedding, gifts, parties, cooking, art… everything in just in one issue. If you start browsing magazine from cover to cover in just one sitting, you will be kept hopping in various topics of life... (Oh, I forgot that it claims to cover lifestyle also).

And in this effort of giving everything, it lost from its core positioning of looking Gorgeous!

It seems that mostly articles are contributed from various sources/contributors and that is why they don’t look that they belong to one single magazine. Because of the poor subbing, every article has its own style & format of writing. There are several mistakes in proofing that also spoil your taste of reading.

DESIGN 
Articles are structured as they were originally typed by authors in Word or Notepad and then they are laid out on the pages in the same formatting… including bullets! There is nothing in the name of design, just random placing of images on pages and the text running around... that’s it.

Oops, I missed the biggest design contribution in the magazine is – section slugs! OMG, it is like a huge round rubber-seal kind of element of a diameter of almost 2inch and it is appearing every single page… it’s so irritating and spoiling the layout (which was already not impressive).

Cover is just a blunder in the name of designing – it has just a celebrity photograph on the cover and that too over-worked hence it has become a flat picture without any texture or details. There is not main cover story here although it is the newsstand selling consumer magazine. In the name of cover content, there are some bulleted words under two section names and rest under the – Other section.

And designer has done nothing here in the name of design but has just copied from word & pasted here using default leading and formatting. Oh, he/she has added black out glow behind the text which has just spoiled only the main image.

Contents pages are not better than the content page of a school text book.

Inside pages also have lots of design related errors and undisciplined work. Even the regular elements are not used in consistency. When you pick up any magazine from this genre, you expect to see a beautiful work and soothing page design, but GL disappoints at core.

PRINTING
Not a single image is printed its original color. Reason might be simple that all the images which are used in the magazine are stock images or might be taken from the web. Mostly photographs are having non-Indian faces and printed in pink or reddish color tone…some images are having white color of skin, some are cyan heavy. Poor prepress work and image correction caused this bad printing. Registration is ok and there is no fringing on any page.

PRODUCT
GL is a bi-monthly and is priced at Rs50. Issue has around 100 pages from cover to cover. Looking at the price, the size is fine but the content quality is not such that you should spend even that on this magazine. It is printed on fairly good paper but ultimately a reader buys a magazine for its content not for the page quality only. It is perfectly bound magazine with a spine with a decent thick cover.

 

In order to covering everything under one title (as its editor-publisher, Amit Sharma also claims in his edit note), this magazine is not more than a compilation of variety of articles collected from here and there and put them together in form of a magazine. If they really want to make it sustainable and impressive magazine to create its space in Indian magazine reader’s mind, they really rethink on its edit & design with some focus.

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Travel with Style: Does not take you anywhere

What comes to your mind when someone promises you to take for a 'Travel with Style'? Obviously, a stylish and luxurious traveling experience! I also expected the same when I picked up this magazine from newsstand which is launched last month only by Sampan Media Pvt. Ltd. But it wiped out all my expectations from this magazine when I read it thoroughly. 

As it is in the travel vertical, there are good numbers of national and international titles are already there on newsstands for the targeted Indian reader, you should be very-very clear and perfect about what you are presenting. TWS, which has a lag line - Stylishly Different... actually is very different from what you expect from the title… and that disappoints. 

CONTENT
As I have mentioned earlier, it should have a clear focus on the content structure to create its own niche in this already saturated vertical, it has no idea where to head. In the name of luxury-style and travel, it has tried to pack everything from the world in one magazine. Result? - a lost and badly structured magazine.

It has a very weak and shallow FOB which has some nonsense news from the globe. Then it starts with health (?), some random questions from a celebrity on travel, then some pages on luxury cars, then a coverage of India Bridal Fashion week (?), a story on wildlife trip, then again Fitness, then some senseless interview, then one trip for South Australia and another for Delhi - back to back, one article on Armani products line, feature on some random photographer, shopping in Mumbai and eating in Italy... phew!

Clearly there is no editorial direction and have no clue of maintaining the flow of content presentation that is required for a good magazine. They don't have any idea what their reader wants to read. All the articles are appearing as if they are coming from several different magazines instead of looking from one single magazine. Most of the articles don't have any structure... they just start right from the headline and finish at the end. Copy desk work is also an average, not impressive. Paid features also laid out in editorial content style hence, there is not any difference between both.

DESIGN 
Very poor in the class... especially when your magazine belongs to such a lively genre where there are no limits for the creativity. Magazine page areas on some pages are going beyond the folio…!! The designers have not followed even simple and basic rules of page layout for a magazine. Every single page and stories are just a - jugaad!

Starting from the cover, there is no connection of the main visual with the magazine’s personality. Very bad cover story lines and top of that their treatment. Designer has tried all the effects and cluttering he could do… unnecessary and irrational – tilts, outlines, colors, typefaces, serifs-sans serifs, odd leading, placing, alignment of elements, shadows, block behind the text… what not! Worst part is that the word ‘with’ in the masthead of the magazine is placed differently in the second issue only!!

Inside pages are also badly layout. When you are reading a magazine from such a lively genre, you have some expectations of standard and class from it. Main body copy fonts are so dull and varying columns widths and gutters are changed as per the requirement (mood). There is no consistency in headlines and other design elements like, info boxes, tables, infographics. As the result, you don’t feel a ‘wow’ factor while browsing pages of TWS.

PRINTING
Prepress work is also not impressive. Some images are good but some are printed in weird colors. On many pages, even the skin color is not produced properly. Except of few pages where registration is shaken a bit, rest of the pages are printed well.

PRODUCT
Although 84 pages of content for a monthly magazine seems very less to read, but a good quality of inside pages and good paper used for the cover and a perfect binding gives a great look to this magazine. I wish it was presented well in terms of design and photographs; it would have been worth of its cover price which is Rs100. And the segment of audience this magazine is targeting is, does expect a great quality and a rich product to read.

Though, Travel with Style has its tagline of being stylishly different but the way this magazine currently is, it seems funny. To justify its positioning, publishers and editorial team need to think again on editorial structure and accordingly the art team need to put the magazine together to make it sustainable magazine in its genre.

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