Apologies, I've rather neglected this blog. I've been busy with lots of different projects at Future, plus I've also been hard at work on my children's site Patterns for Colouring. The pattern site is entering a new phase and I'm currently polishing off the finishing touches on a site redesign. Magazines are still my main focus - I've recently art edited two issues of Procycling. I've also had stints

Time Inc has developed a new way of consuming magazines. You personalise them by giving the customer a choice of what should appear in their unique edition. The publishing company makes available a number of articles from its top brands, and you get to make a choice. Unfortunately you don't get to edit out the ads, targeted advertorials are also included. Despite this sting in the tail it represents

Arena closes its doors. A sign of the difficult times that newstand editions face.

Design Week seems to be taking a certain amount of joy in Condé Nast doing a slight repeat of a prior NME cover. Beth Ditto has posed nude for their new launch title 'Love', however the NME first featured her nude in 2007. Though I would hardly call the original a triumph! Personally I don't really see the problem. Here's a star that likes to celebrate her size and femininity, so its not surprising

Roland de Wolfe makes another appearance under our masthead. Its the first time we've re-featured a player on the cover. Inside the issue you can get his opinion on the cost of tournaments these days. It was an incredibly busy issue for me, not only did I have to put all of the design together, as usual, but I also had to shuttle to London several times to cover the WSOPE. I got to meet a lot of the

As mentioned below the MPA has anounced its winner. Yawn!

The MPA awards for the best cover of the year are being decided as we speak. Here are the contenders. Some nice shots but as mag covers I'm not impressed. I know that the US market operated in a different way to the UK but none of these examples makes me think "Wow". Obviously Jessica here is rather alluring but it not that special a cover, is it? In terms of pure look I'd have to choose the "T" japanese

I think its safe to say that the first issue AFTER a redesign is always difficult, this one was no exception. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into creating this little beauty. Despite the pain it turned out to be a great issue.Joe Beevers of The Hendon Mob is our cover star. He was very obliging considering that the shoot was right after he had just busted out of his Poker Nations heat! Read his

Its been a very busy last few months for me. Firstly I had to do a redesign of my magazine, WPT Poker. My colleagues and I have produced a more focussed product aimed at the established poker playing community. We've added far more input from professional players, giving the reader far more chance to immerse themselves in the practice and atmosphere of cardroom mentality.The look of the magazine is

I've been so snowed under recently that I've been unable to update you on our latest issues. Well let me fix it by pointing out our latest corker of an issue. Cover star Liv Boeree kindly gave up some of her hectic schedule to do an exclusive photoshoot for us. The results were great as you can see. We recently went to a recording session of a Pokerstars televised event. We had a bundle of these copies

Happy New Year to all you Poker and Design fans. Here's the latest issue that you can pick up from WHSmiths or from the Future Mag store. This issue has Roland De Wolfe brooding moodily on the cover - the shot was taken during last years WSOPE in London. He gets good coverage in the mag as well with mentions in a number of features, the best of which is the Pro on Pro interview he takes part in with

Belated plug of the latest issue - I've been mad busy recently on about seven different tangents, so keeping everything up to date has been difficult. Never mind you've still got chance to get hold of a copy and read about the following...Big Time: Start playing in the worlds biggest poker games. We show you how to prepare.Keep your own fishfinder database so that you can keep the 'roll afloatCoverage

Here are two US lists of "the best of" 2007 for magazines and books. Granted, Mr. Magazines list is solely of new launches but its good to see collections like these just to keep in touch with what is out there. I've done a few nano seconds of googling for UK examples but to no avail. If you find any, let me know in the comments.Mr. Magazines' site also has an interesting article for those that want

US mag Print magazine has an interesting article about the use of online video by publishing houses in its latest issue. Many print media houses are producing online clips to capture the "Youtube" audience. Great news for readers, especially if the media company actually puts some effort into it. Roll on the shaky handheld footage of mag staff giggling nervously in a broom cupboard that you could only

As featured in my Christmas list, magCulture is a book all mag art bods should have in their library. The author Jeremy Leslie also runs a magazine design blog also called magCulture (funnily enough). Its a regular destination for this blog.Jeremy's knowledge of the industry is vast and its always worth catching his articles in publications like Creative Review. I once worked for Jeremy at John Brown

Vegas came to London recently for the WSOPE and we took the opportunity to bag an interview with Phil Hellmuth (whilst hobnobbing at the Savoy). We asked him about how he felt winning his eleventh bracelet. Also in town was Annette15, demon online player - she went on to win the London event right after we set our photographer loose on her! Apart from all of this we have the following in the latest

Straight from the Popbitchs mouth...Che played for the SIC club in Buenos Aires, while training to be a doctor, and in his spare time founded a rugby magazine called Tackle, which he wrote entirely by himself.Who would have thought it? I wonder if any copies still exist?

I was just taking a look at another blog about mags and found an interesting link. Its a list of the 15 best US mag covers EVER! Its more of a "check this out if you're curious" kind of link. There are some interesting entries (like the comped together Brangelina cover of the "Star").However, what really caught my eye was the purpose of the site. Called Yourcover, its intended to be a Lulu-esque service

David Williams takes a bow on our latest cover. We managed to track him down in Vegas for a photoshoot. He came well prepared - he had visited his jeweller beforehand and appeared with boxes containing $500,000 worth of bling. After turning the lights down a notch we bagged this great cover image. He'll be pleased to hear that we also feature his mum - she beat him in the WSOP!Get the mag to hear how

It looks like magazine design is about to get dragged through the wringer again. Anti design tends to rear its head every decade and now Creative Review is picking up on the latest bunch of 'Ugly' designers.There's nothing wrong with re-appraisal, design can't exist without innovation. The whole point of design is to engage tired audiences with new ways to express an idea. It's a needed process - it's

If you've had chance to have a nose around the rest of this site then you'll have noticed that I work on a publication called WPT Poker: The official World Poker Tour magazine. So here's the first plug of this blog...Go head to head with Katya Thater (our coverstar) as we cover the Heads-up Championship at the World Series 2007. Katya features as our main profile after winning a bracelet in the $1,500