Cooking Light: The Redesign Ain't Right

I’m a foodie. My husband and I cook nearly all of our meals, we belong to a cooking club, we have way too many cookbooks, and we have subscriptions to three cooking magazines: Eating Well, Cook’s Illustrated, and Cooking Light. Yesterday, Cooking Light arrived in my mailbox with the following call-outs on its cover: “America’s Best-Selling Food Magazine, Now Better Than Ever” and “NEW Fresh Look!”

Just the day before, my husband and I had been talking about how much better we liked Eating Well to Cooking Light. Compared to one another, Eating Well is more readable. My husband is not a designer, yet he was able to pick up on the fact that Eating Well is a much better designed publication. The recipes are easier to read, the layout is not jam packed, and the overall quality of the design is just superior.

So, I eagerly opened my Cooking Light, anticipating that its layout would now rival Eating Well. Unfortunately, it has taken a turn for the worse.

The type size overall is larger, making elements fit too tightly. I’m guessing that larger type is something that many readers requested, as it can be a challenge to follow a recipe as you’re struggling with a hot pan and too little counter space. But when you make type bigger you need to adjust margins and other elements so things don’t look crowded. This didn’t happen.

Bold italic type is not a good type choice for readability. Yes, those typefaces exist but only for those occasional times when your already bolded headline type includes something like a title that needs to be italicized. It’s a poor choice for a regular header. In general, there is far too much italic type throughout the magazine now.

Too many typefaces and styles. Across the magazine I can see recipe names set in: bold italic slab-serifed font, italic slab-serifs (but not bold), all-cap sans serif, and yet another place where there is a more tradition title-cased serif font. That’s 4 different treatments just for recipe names.

The new recipe index is horrendous. What used to be an elegant table is now a multi-page hodge podge. Yes the type is easier to read because it’s larger, but having the index in one compact format, with an easy-to-see key was actually more user friendly.

There are just too many competing design elements. Slanted header bars to identify stories; graphics of spiral notebooks and three-dimensional looking notes; heavy dashed lines, heavy solid lines and pictures of whisks and timers. While your aim was to guide and give some punch, the result is overkill and a very strong turn off.

I read the “Editor’s Note”, and agreed with all of their content changes: a photo for each recipe; more quick and easy recipes, etc. But interestingly the actual design changes and “fresh look” were not written about. Maybe that’s because they weren’t given much thought.