What the Elle?

I just bought Elle magazine today and have been whining about it to everyone until thought "Wait, isn't that why I have a blog?"

Perhaps it's just me being picky, but the cover really feels like a poor effort. First, here's the subscribers issue.

Cute huh? I still can't tell you anything Kate Beckinsale has done or why she deserves a cover, but hey - those nine little versions of her look pretty good.

Here's the general sale cover, with only three Kates:
 

Not hideous, right? I mean, not ground-breaking either but at least it doesn't make me want to scratch my eyes out.

Here's the same cover without the text:

Do you see why this cover annoys me so much? It's not even a bad Photoshop job - it's a bad Microsoft Paint job. Why have three Kates only got five arms and four feet between them? Her right foot in the furthest right image really bothered me. Just sliced off. Gone. I don't suppose the Elle pictures team thought she might need that later.

And, to top it all off, editor wrote in her letter did we, the readers, like the magazines new cover look? Well. No, actually. Not at all.
http://tinyurl.com/596ld5
I expect something better from you next month, Elle! If this is your way of forcing me into buying a subscription, that's very crafty of you. At least the subscribers get covers that had a little bit of thought go into them...

Comments

[rote]

The success of a design depends on what you are trying to do with it, non? If they are trying to make it look like three Kate Beckinsales were badly photographed pulling bad poses then sloppily photographed to make them look one would hope only marginally better*, then this is a very incomplete success.

If they wanted it to be obviously incongruous, obviously split up into three panels, then, job done. So. You have to assume - since it's so obviously lumped onto the page, the latter was the idea. Three distinct Photographs of Kate turned into one single cover, not three Kates turned into one photograph.

In any case I personally think the whole thing's awful. I don't even like the subscriber's issue; why use the same three pictures three times, is she That Bad in front of a camera? Well, looking at the ones they did use, maybe she is.

The only thing I like about any of it is the idea of a magazine being called Elle Late (which is how it looks to me). Like. Hollyoaks Late. A slightly more grown up, risqué version, in the most unbelievably unconvincing, cheap, throwaway, timid way.

_

* if these pictures, post post-production, look A Lot better than the originals, then Kate Beckinsale is really not at her best these days.