I chose to critique ‘bon appétit’ this month in my attempt to showcase my digital nature. Of course, much of what they print cannot be displayed on a digital cell screen. There are a lot of components on each page and hundreds of little blurb writings that fill in the pages. Each small writing sample is accompanied by a small graphic or photo of food. The magazine simply attempts you to read one thing on a page before moving on. There seemed to be two articles of any size within the magazine, both having to do with going out at night and drinking less.
The opening of the magazine is hard to follow the exact publishers’ pages as it is crammed with ads. The opening ads are text heavy making it look like a readable magazine with lots of content. After looking through the magazine the real content are the many recipes that are offered, many times three to a page on more than several pages. Some of the ads seemed to have been placed to complement the content for eye appeal, making the food and the food items that the advertisers are interested more interesting. This was well done. But when you open the magazine basing your readership on the ads to direct the attention through the first few pages, it’s hard to follow what was established by the magazine itself. It is good that the ads seem to represent the brand.
Much of the format is the same throughout the magazine giving it consistency and that was something they were trying to break up with their ‘healthy-ish’ edition by giving some of the pages a cartoon-based wording. This also allowed them to use graphics of a cartoon nature. It seemed to be fitting that there was a bubbly and overset style to the magazine to relate to its concept. The graphics were well organized and related to each other throughout and the recipes seemed to be very much alike with a bit of water added to the flavors with vegetables.
The ads did taper off after the first half of the magazine and the back of the magazine had some features of some of the dishes. The full page for a food item on a cell phone is easy to scroll past and does not allow for comments. The miniature descriptions in the magazine are a sport for some writers and should not be used as word count for payment. A page is still a page of content, on a cell screen or on a physical page. The fact that the magazine was mainly written and put together by one writer and one eater is intense. That this person lived the story of eating these recipes and dishes is unique and worth following. However to condense this story, let alone the ‘bon appétit’ magazine so that my neighbor at the café can take it with them and leave me my copy is something only a digital magazine can accomplish.