My bum needs its own sofa

I castrated my evil dadThis post was first made at npdnotebook in October 2011

I do wonder about the ease with which Chat’s editor Gilly Sinclair peels off her brilliant coverlines. ‘My bum needs its own sofa’, ‘Sliced Off! I castrated my evil dad’, ‘Saved from the pot! What a lucky plucker…’. It all seems to suggest an imagination that frankly, I’d rather not know too much about!

Much like a tabloid newspaper, in a real-life weekly it’s often the words are the most important visual component. It is they that create images in your mind, they that deliver colour, and they that determine the layout of the page.

Right from the very first issue (Knit your own Royal Family!) Chat’s lines have always been a shrewd blend of knowing gags, weird shit and truly shocking ideas. It’s voyeuristic, nihilistic, and often entirely unrealistic. Like its readers, it really does live in the moment, as evidenced by the genius strapline: ‘Life! Death! Prizes!’

But the world is becoming ever more visual, so Chat has responded with this new and significantly improved cover design. The key decision is to make the lead story image the canvas that carries the splash line. It’s subtle, but very effective in establishing the primacy and cut-through of the lead story. There are fewer stories overall, only five against the market’s usual six, but they have more room, and are well detailed, so there’s no loss of value.

The ‘new’ messaging is worth noting also. As well as the monster blob top left, the new franchises are continually labelled as such, allowing art editor Rob Plowright-Taylor to let the whole package literally crackle with a sense of excitement.

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