The guys at Amateur Gardening gave me a shout back in early March and asked me if I'd cast an analytical eye over their revamped magazine when it hits the news stands on the 3rd April 2010.
Front cover...I have to say that there doesn't appear to be an awful lot of difference here. Look at the photo at the top...the left hand side is the latest edition and the right is from December 2009: OK different colours and content but nothing to tell me there's been a revamp.
Similarly - unless you are bit of fonts fanatic - the inside sees little change in terms of style: granted, colours and layout move with editions, but that's what you'd expect in a magazine anyway.
There are more pages (about 20%) in the 2010 editions and great deal more adverts too - good for the publisher but I'm not so sure about the reader...is it all just filling and eye candy?
Apart from my initial (disappointment) observations about the supposed changes, I have to say, when I last read Amateur Gardening back in December; I liked it then and I still like it - it's punchy with bite size tips and info as well as longer more in-depth articles throughout and ideal for reading in the potting shed after days digging.
The colours and photography are seductive and there are endless images throughout to hold the reader's attention.
Regular readers of Landscape Juice will know my views in respect of magazines versus the Internet so you won't be surprised about what I'm going to say next.
Amateur Gardening is a fantastic little magazine that really deserves to be a blog (too?) it cries out for it and all of those bite-sized tips and editorial are perfect for online publishing...the photography would work excellently as well.
Amateur Magazine's website - considering it's owned by IPC - only really serves as a holding and subscriptions page; although they do have an active Facebook page which is a good step in the right direction and it has 578 members so far.
It seems I'm not the only one found wanting; regular reader, Jo Seller, said: "I can't tell you how disappointed I am!! Firstly, all the hype about saving 50p - I am a subscriber,so don't benefit :( but...far more importantly - the new look magazine is such a letdown!!! Hardly anything has changed and there are no new sections at all. Still an awful lot of emphasis on veg growing but nothing innovative at all!!! What a missed opportunity - I am distraught!!!!!!! :("
Regular reader, Mary Cockcroft, is a little harder and says, "After much hype and anticipation building up, I received the new style AG in the post this morning and read it from cover to cover. I was absolutely stunned! The layout looks like it was modeled on a children's magazine! No longer a wealth of content, it has become a desert of information with a lot of 'soundbite' size blocks and big photos breaking
up the pages. Sadly, it didn't come up to the quality I've come to expect from AG."
Has Amateur Gardening failed to learn from Gardeners' World?
What's surprising about the new look Amateur Gardening, is how dated the layout and colours are. This is how gardening magazines looked about 15 years ago. At least it doesn't look as ugly as Kitchen Garden.
Posted by: Rich | Apr 02, 2010 at 09:32 AM