NEW LOOK COVER FOR MEW

The Bleeding of the Workshop lettering is a poor attempt at giving it a chrome look possibly to stop people thinking it covers other workshop activity liek woodwork. maybe with teh new glossy cover the graphics should be revisited

You missed a trick Neil, should also have linked to the recent Binders thread, keeps those slippery mags under control or has that been the cunning plan all along

Let's appeal to a wider audience...

FFS

Get rid of the chainsaw rubbish at the top would be my suggestion.

Certainly +1 for that

Howard

S O D

Issue 666 is a devil ,of an idea!

Just being catty

Howard

Vic,

Reasonable idea, but please retain the Issue Number in its usual position and size. Placing it 1/4 of the way down and in tiny letters is just not on.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

That's 319 right there...

Edited By JasonB on 08/07/2022 12:08:32

Common practice on many magazines and newspapers from the Guardian to the Daily Tele to have pointers above the masthead. Apparently it works for them.

Edited By Hopper on 08/07/2022 12:23:45

Sorry edited your post rather than quoted but this is my reply as to why

Because it would be better placed below the title, which would still have it in the visible part of the page . Keep the title at the top and one liners below. 

Look at issues before 151 and just move the date below Workshop then the title can sit even higher

Edited By JasonB on 08/07/2022 12:15:59

Serious answer - because it is just more clutter for the eye to not focus on.

Replace it with the "The magazine for....." strapline.

The issue number doesn't need to be repeated with the month.

Lose the website address, anyone likely to use it will already have the mag in their hands.

The "Shows are back" headline is enough by itself.

Similarly, "Win an English wheel"

The list at the bottom should be more concise; "Laurie's lockdown project", "Stan Bray's classic optical punch", "Converting a CNC mill to manual???"

The photo is an excellent example of what not to use as it's hugely cluttered but also has loads of wasted space and it's hard to see what the central machine is with all the overlapping items.

On the other hand, the scientific research shows readers invariably enter a page through a photo and almost never through printed words. So having a pointer at the top of the page with even a small photo will draw readers in when the main photo is hidden behind another magazine below it on the news-stand. A written strap line or even the large masthead does not provide a point of entry for readers. They will scan straight past it to the next interesting image, the science shows.

A lot of research has been done on this stuff, measured by laser beams bounced off eyeballs of surveyed readers to measure precisely what they look at and when they look at it when reading newspapers and magazines. A lot of the results are quite surprising. Another big one is that invariably pages work best with one large "Dominant Visual Element" (either a photo or graphic) and one or several smaller visual elements (either pics or graphics) on the page for readers to move back and forth between. Only they do most readers move on to actually reading a headline. Next best read after the headline is photo captions.

So that's why many newspapers and magazines these days have pictorial pointers above the masthead. It's science. (And it sells newspapers/magazines.)

Edited By Hopper on 08/07/2022 13:16:47

If that's the case then stick the competition at the top rather than a chainsaw adjuster that most won't have a need for.

That doesn't explain why it would be better.

Neil

It's interesting, because the changes were all specifically asked for on the grounds they encourage more sales.

What's needed to ensure the future of the magazine is to attract new readers in a way that doesn't alienate existing ones.

Are regular readers deeply concerned about things other than can they identify the magazine quickly, will it slip off the piles and can I find the issue number easily?

Are the graphic layout changes just minor niggles or genuinely upsetting?

Neil

Took me a while to work out what I was looking at. A shaper in a scrap yard?

An example of an 'engineering' magazine cover that is attractive, carries a clear message and entices one inside..... **LINK**

Ches

Perhaps I am easy to please,but I can't see anything wrong with the cover as shown. I buy a magazine not by what it looks like, but by what it contains. A few months back I bought a copy of MEW because it had a mention on the cover of electroplating 3D prints.

Lee