...the more it stays the same...

I got sent this by a friend who thought I'd take some pleasure in it. I don't really, I'd rather just have some more good magazines to read that treated me like something other than a sex-crazed, sport-loving neanderthal on account of my gender.

Maybe they should read my handy guide to creating a men's magazine worth reading. I do it for the love people.

The love.

Why Australian GQ sucks - part 5: Online

Do me a favour, open a new tab or window in your browser and punch in www.gq.com.au. What happens? It re-directs to the Vogue website where we’re given a token sampling of the current issue in the midst of the Australian Vogue website.

Hold up (wait a minute).

Vogue. We’re not Vogue, we’re GQ! Since when is the GQ man subservient to the Vogue woman? Understand, this isn’t gender politics, this is branding 101. The GQ man is strong and independent, he is a law unto his own stylish self. He can have epic, swinging-from-the-chandeliers-sex with the Vogue woman, but he is in no way beholden to her, certainly not a subset of her environment.

Contrast this with British GQ. Being the digital guy that I am, I’m going to call a spade a bloody shovel (thanks Grandpa), the British GQ site isn’t much better, but it is its own beast. Girls, gadgets, films, music, motors, style, grooming, bars, restaurants and only right at the end is the magazine mentioned – which makes me think, nay, hope Conde Nast’s UK operations have an inkling that print still has a role to play but its digital offering needs to have its own legs.

(I am however biased...moving on...)

GQ.com.au should be something the magazine is not. Nobody is going to read a printed page’s worth of content online, pieces are shorter, they’re a single idea (or they should be). You have people’s attention in a place where they’re willingly engaged by your brand. Not only that, you probably have the attention of some fairly articulate and intelligent people (and then me) who are in a medium where they’re familiar with exchanging ideas in public forums; why not give them an appropriate space to do that?

What about a showcase for Australia’s best menswear designers? You have such limited inventory in the magazine, online is as good as limitless. We’re all guilty of salivating over the same foreign labels, though I was in a bar Saturday night and a guy in Zegna asked where I got my coat – it was Saba, home grown. If a site conveniently put together a shopping list of Australian labels I would seek them out and wear them proudly.

Let’s recognise there’s a whole audience around men’s grooming and fashion that is unique to Australian culture, why is Australian GQ not the epicentre of that the way GQ is in every other territory? Because we still all aspire to Paul Smith suits anyway? Perhaps. But if we don’t back our own nobody else will, and GQ Australia is in a privileged position where it can and should make that happen.

In conclusion...

I'm a huge fan of the GQ brand - to me it perfectly nails a combination of aspiration and accessibility. The GQ man is James Bond without the inconvenience of having to save the world (though he probably could...), it is working hard and playing much, much harder. We all have brands or products we love that have somehow fallen by the wayside, as consumers we can demand they do better, and we should! If they do better, then everyone wins, if they don't, it is a one-sided victory that isn't even ours - it goes to that brand's competitors.

For now though, I'm going back to work, There's a new British GQ out on the shelves of Borders, and I'm stuck back in March. I suppose in the absence of Australian GQ, I'd at least have more time...

...something the GQ man can never get enough of.

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Image courtesy of Stabilo Boss with thanks to Flickr Storm.

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Update: I wanted to link all five posts together for easy reference, so here they are.

1. The Editor


2. The Writers


3. The Art Direction


4. Audience & Competitors


5. Online (you are here)

Why Australian GQ sucks - part 3: Art direction

I’ll raise a hand here and say this is a subjective one, everyone likes something different. So, be something different! The art direction on Australian GQ is so clinical as to give the appearance of robotic overlords having taken control, operating on a paint by numbers basis.

In fairness though, British GQ has an ace up its sleeve; it’s called Jo Levin. Jo has been the magazine’s director of chic for a long time, and does it so well a book called GQ Cool was published a couple years ago, highlighting her best work which went a long way to making every person in the pages look like a bonafide superstar, even when all the person staring back at the camera had managed was an ungraceful early exit on Pop Idol. British GQ’s writers are extraordinary, but, with a picture being worth a thousand words and all, Jo Levin gives the magazine a hundred thousand more each issue.

Overall, the layout and art direction in GQ OZ seems more an after-thought than a seized opportunity to extend the brand’s visual identity. I don’t know GQ’s circulation, maybe it does indeed lose money each issue and is actually the poor cousin of the rest of the publisher’s stable. If that is the case then there’s no attempt going on right now to hide that, but I don’t think anyone is capable of mounting an argument that GQ should ever appear second best to anything.

Much like the Editor, the Art Director needs to take that vision of GQ and wash that through the magazine. If you need glasses to read and don’t have them handy, then the colours and shapes on the page should still feel like GQ, and currently it has all the passion of of a senior’s pharmaceutical brochure. All the words used to describe the clothes on display (crisp, fresh, modern) should be employed for the layout. This will forever remain subjective, but if I may employ the words of Malcolm X on a far more trivial matter than he had in mind, "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."

Still to come: audience & competitors.

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Image courtesy of Simon Pais-Thomas, with thanks to Flickr Storm.

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Update: I wanted to link all five posts together for easy reference, so here they are.

1. The Editor


2. The Writers


3. The Art Direction (you are here)


4. Audience & Competitors


5. Online