3.09.2018

Four Covers for the April Issue

The editors at Martha Stewart Living had a lot of fun with the April issue, devising four different covers for the newsstand, subscriber and digital versions of the publication! Perhaps the arrival of two new team members stirred the creative juices for this issue; Abbey Kuster-Prokell is the new creative director of the magazine (Jaspal Riyait stepped down in February) and James Maikowski is the new art director.
The newsstand cover is illustrated with brightly coloured wooden eggs while the subscriber cover demonstrates a lighter palette of eggs in an egg-shaped nest of pussy willows. During a Facebook Live video, Martha explained that the two different covers for the newsstand and the subscriber issue (a "split run") was the result of a difference of opinion regarding which cover was best: Martha preferred the subscriber cover with the paler eggs while the publishers preferred the brighter colours. Thanks to a generous ad campaign by Quaker Oats, the magazine was able to produce both covers, plus two extras, which also appear inside the covers of the newsstand and subscriber versions, as well as on the digital versions of the magazine. Fun!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The first two covers shown acknowledge The Easter Season and are very handsome ( the pastel basket of eggs is my favorite). In my opinion the "hanging clothes" cover up is vague as it could be an issue re, organization, dry cleaning, possibly even tailoring. Well, as for the last cover, I guess they could not resist a month with out showing FOOD!
I will agree they are all interesting, but pleased they did not chose another food cover for general distribution.
APM

Pamela said...

I just received my Living magazine today and I have three of those for covers on my magazine! I am missing the brightly colored eggs. LOL but it seems that Quaker Oats has gotten quite an advertising spree as they are on the inside cover on two of the three covers that I have :-) really unusual or is this the same for everyone else?

ANDREW RITCHIE said...

Hi Pamela - yes, both the newsstand copy and the subscriber copies have the three covers. The newsstand cover and the subscriber cover are different, but the inside covers (the closet and the vegetables) are on both versions. Martha explained that she authorized a "split run" for this issue with different covers because of the Quaker advertising campaign. Martha likes the subscriber issue cover (with the soft coloured eggs) and the people at Meredith preferred the bolder cover with the brighter eggs for the newsstand. So they ran both. They have done this in the past, as well!