Come on, Condé Nast. Really?

So, this post may not be the most timely, but I meant to blog about Fashion Rocks this summer, and then was recently reminded about it when I came across the 2007 Fashion Rocks issue again in a waiting room.

Since 2004, Condé Nast has included Fashion Rocks magazine as an annual supplement to 17 of their titles (including the varied and disparate Vogue, Teen Vogue, Jane, Architectural Digest, and The New Yorker). It’s produced in tandem with the Fashion Rocks live concert during Fashion Week in New York.

Condé Nast, what gives? This is a terribly designed magazine. I mean, really, really, bad.

You may not get the full flavor, but here’s a sample:

What’s wrong with it? Let me count the ways…

1. What’s with the typefaces? I’m having a flashback to 1994. That slab serif set in all caps for the headlines (Look Who’s Back; Rock Star to Reality) and that skinny skinny serif (Photographed by Norman Jean Roy; Leather and Lace) put me in mind of Rockwell and Onyx, staples in my font arsenal in the mid 90’s. Not fabulous then. Certainly not fabulous now. They carry these font choices throughout the entire magazine.

2. That scrapbook look has got to go. I know the idea is that it looks casual and like something your 16 year old might put together, but why are they striving for that? I hate the way that looks. Even when I was 16, I hated the way that looked, and it hasn’t grown on me. Ugly. Dated. Feh.

3. See that little subhead on the cover? “Models on Nearly Every Page”? Why does that put me in mind of “Live Girls! Nude!”? They’re not nude in Fashion Rocks, but if you need a headline like that to get someone to open your (free) magazine, I think you’re in trouble.

4. Everything is too tight — the margin width, the leading, the space between the text and the images. I feel claustrophobic.

5. Those squat little initial caps on all of the stories are very annoying. Am I splitting hairs? Yes. But do they look good? No.

With all of the talent and resources available at the various Condé Nast publications, it’s hard to believe that this is the best they can do.