Why, oh why, can’t the Observer produce a decent colour magazine?
Over the years it’s had more re-launches than the Cromer lifeboat and still produces a sinking feeling every Sunday morning.
Possibly because the Observer has never really had its heart in it.
While the Sunday Times Magazine and the Telegraph Magazine (appearing on Friday, Sunday and Saturday in turn) eagerly embraced the miracle that was coloured ink on glossy paper nearly half-a-century ago, the Observer trailed reluctantly behind – going through the motions of giving its readers a colour supplement but never investing it with any real personality or sense of purpose.
How ironic that our most radical Sunday has always turned out the least adventurous magazine.
The same contradiction is apparent in its latest incarnation.
Cash-strapped as ever, the Observer has trimmed its Sunday package to three items – the main Newspaper, the so-called New Review, and the Magazine. While the parent newspaper continues to utilise the Berliner page-size even more effectively than its Guardian stablemate, the New Review takes a giant further stride in dramatising the format.
Spectacular images, eye-catching headings soaring in generous white space, crisply marshalled text and boldly defined sections – they all combine to create an IMAX big screen effect on little ol’ newsprint.
Turning to the second issue of the new look Magazine is like squinting through the wrong end of a telescope. Shorter and narrower than its rivals to begin with, the design is determined to make the content even more distant and cramped.
Only one picture in 60 pages crosses the gutter to make a genuine spread. The only other photographs to make even a single page are of a plate of meatballs, three out-of-focus workmen standing around a baby car, and a solitary figure posed beneath display panels of flight departures in an air terminal.
In face of all established flat-planning, the opening feature runs for 3,500 words through four text-heavy pages, illustrated by one small picture and a second even smaller – while the cover story is only to be found at the very end of the issue and is another 5,000 words of pretty solid text. And in between are no less than 13 single-page features, robbing the general run of the magazine of any real substance.
The Sunday Times Magazine continues to set the standard with elegantly displayed pages that marry words and images in an expansive pattern that positively pulls the reader into each and every spread. What a pity that the Observer Magazine seems to want to label its pages with the warning: Keep Out!
Peter Jackson www.maximags.co.uk