The new UK specific edition of Wired launched this month it’s a brave and ballsy idea to launch a new magazine when the naysayers are predicting the death of print. The launch cover line: Your Life In The Future and the accompanying issue really impressed me at first, but the more and more I looked the less and less enamoured with it I became.
I had the unnerving feeling that I’d seen it all before and that the cover image was a picture I’d seem somewhere else. After a while though I realised that it wasn’t that I’d seen the image before or that it didn’t fit but that I’d already seen this future. This was a future I was comfortable with it was the future I expected to see. There was nothing in the image I couldn’t have imagined already, nothing that shocked or jarred or intrigued me. Space elevators? Arthur C Clarke told me about them years ago. Buildings with solar panels and wind turbines? Already happening. Elevated transport systems? Don’t they have one in Chicago?
I think Wired has missed an opportunity here. An opportunity to do something really brave to challenge the same old same old magazine covers. Take a look round WH Smiths and what you see is banks and banks of magazines all with the same cover. Sure, the image is different and the words, but in essence if you removed the titles you’d be hard pushed to describe any genuine differences. The same is true of this new issue of Wired. The cover of Wired isn’t a vision of the future it’s a vision of the magazine publisher of today. Clearly they had a lot of money to get this cover right and in my opinion they’ve been too conservative. Having been in magazine cover meetings I’m certain that some of the really great ideas were left behind because the ‘experienced professional opinions’ lacked the conviction to do something truly different because ‘it won’t work’. In the main this is probably true but with the launch issue I think you can get away with it. If this is the ‘really great idea’ then sadly I don’t hold out much hope for their covers.
The letter from the editor jarred too, it was more a sales pitch than something from the editor who can see the future or at least knows the people who do and is going to pay then to write. Much like the cover the editor’s letter was what we already have. Look at page XX for our great story from the really intelligent XX and don’t forget to subscribe. I wanted something more meaty, an editor’s letter that wasn’t the same as all the others. Interestingly MacUser is one of the few magazines that has kept up to the long editorial letter that isn’t basically a sales letter for something you’ve already bought and all the better for it as far as I’m concerned.
I’d be lying if I said I’d normally buy an issue of a magazine that had a story about the iPlayer, a sinking ship and a mathematical formula for finance, but all were interesting if not a promise of the future. The article on what was going to happen in my future was, I feel, another cop out. Predicting the future is easy because you don’t really have to be an expert in anything to say ‘I think there’ll be a cure for cancer by 2056’ Of course, the people making the predictions are infinitely more qualified than most but they still have as much chance of being right as I do. For example, if I predict that Aston Villa will win the Premiership in the next five years and they do then clearly I know more about football than someone who doesn’t if they don’t then I know nothing about football.
One thing that can’t be faulted is the attention to detail in both design and word craft. Each article looks beautiful as if the art director has spent as much time, care and devotion equally, over every page. I especially like the Test section as it makes the mundane everyday parts of the magazine look as special as the main feature. I’m sure it’ll take a few issues for everything to bed-in and some aspects will change or be removed but overall the look and feel of Wired is a pleasure.
I’m not sure I like all the columns being lumped together, but then maybe it helps the flow. I like the fast facts at the bottom of pages 24 – 57, but I think I’d have spread them throughout the magazine on random pages rather than on consecutive pages. Also, the issue lacked a sense of flow for me, as there’s not enough definition between sections to signpost your journey through the edition. Perhaps this is done on purpose, but I think it has the feeling of one big feature rather than a collection of sections and features.
Over the course of writing this I’ve come to the opinion that this launch issue of Wired feels more like issue five. That may well be the thrust behind the magazine, but I think there’s an opportunity lost. When the redesigned MacUser (previous to the most recent redesign) was being put together there were some things in it, which we felt were different, a departure from what had gone before. Some of them were totally wrong and hated by the readers who complained bitterly so were dropped others were less unpopular and stayed. I feel that this is lacking from Wired, They’ve set out make the perfect magazine and for all that they have achieved this I feel it suffers because of it. There’s nothing I love and, perhaps more importantly, there’s nothing I hate either it just is.
Conde took the really, incredible, fantastical and gutsy decision to launch a highbrow technology magazine and put some real money into it too, but I fear that they’ve played it safe with the publication itself. Shame.
