Hasta La Ideas

Staying with magazines for a bit longer, though a decided British staple, it’s certainly not difficult to find the latest issue of NME over here at even your middle of the road magazine stands. But the next time you’re out to pick up a copy, you might need a few more seconds to track it down, given that they’ve just undergone a big redesign, from the cover to the interior to even an update of their iconic acronym title/brand. The new look has been rolled-out with that familiar magazine move, with the release of ten different covers, featuring musicians like Jack White, Rihanna, and a bunch of other people/groups that you might not have heard of, but are wildly popular in the UK right now (meaning they’ll probably be big hits here by 2012 or so). The redesign, intended to be more “mature” and keep a grip on non-teen readers, comes thanks to the magazine’s new 28-year old wunderkind editor, Krissi Murison. From a great piece in the Guardian about her, here’s a bit about her involvement when the revisions started up:

The redesign is the result of listening to a large number of focus groups. “I sat in the corner and took notes and pretended to be a work experience student.” “Heavyweight” was the word that was fed back again and again and Murison has strived to showcase the magazine’s strengths. She wants to pack so much value into the weekly that it becomes “unmissable”. The aim is for the front section to be topical while the features will reflect Murison’s keenness to retain older readers. When she returned as editor, she was terrified that the NME was too focused on the young and not serving its 18- to 24-year-old core readers.

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