Wow…just surfed into DebR’s Red Shoe Ramblings to see that she and Caitlin had each written to Quilters’ Newsletter Magazine in the past couple of weeks to lament the new editorial slant…or, in my book, how they took the pre-eminent magazine, which deserved its reputation for being the best of the best in general quilting, and (basically) trashed it. Here’s what I wrote, which (as usual) was more long-winded, and perhaps a bit more blunt…..
October 19, 2005

Ms. Mary Leman Austin

Quilters’ Newsletter Magazine

741 Corporate Circle, Suite A

Golden, Colorado 80401 .

Dear Ms. Leman Austin,

With twenty-one years of QNM back-issues on my shelves, I think you could say that I have been a devoted fan and subscriber to your magazine for a long time. It is therefore with great sadness that I write to express my extreme disappointment with the new look and content of QNM. I was appalled at what had happened to what I once considered the “best of the best” of quilting magazines. I withheld judgment, however, hoping the next issue would improve. It was worse. Today, I received my November issue. It is just as bad as the last two, and has 42 pages of ads and patterns taking up nearly half the periodical. Bluntly, I’m afraid, yuck. If I wanted a mass-market pattern magazine with a clunky layout, I could go to the grocery store and pick up any of at least half a dozen magazines. You should know, however, I never buy those kinds of magazines, and if QNM continues in this vein, I’m afraid I won’t buy QNM either.

Criticism does no good if it is not supported by examples, however, so I would like to offer constructive suggestions for several specific things I would most like to see remedied. First and foremost, get rid of the patterns. The thing that QNM does best is report the news of the quilting world—no other magazine does what QNM has done, nor with such class and style. Yet, in 21 years, I have never been tempted by a single pattern in your magazine ….that is simply not why I subscribe to QNM. No matter what else you do to “fix” the damage to QNM, if you continue to use up nearly half of the magazine for patterns, I will cancel my subscription. I would do so with great sadness due to two decades of loving QNM, but subscribing to what QNM has become is a waste of my very scarce subscription dollars. Let people go to Quiltmaker, McCall’s or any one of the other ba-zillion pattern magazines, and restore QNM to what it ought to be: a magazine about the quilting world.

Secondly, the new format for section headers and style appears, alas, to be an example of what not to do in typography and page layout design. By using large font in the text and small font (relatively speaking) in lower case for the section headers you de-emphasize the importance of the section breaks. One recent article had SIX different fonts / sizes / colors within two paragraphs! With the visual clutter from the ads, a clean, bold style for the headers will bring attention to the editorial content of the magazine. As it is now, the columns and headers merge visually with the ads, which in turn detracts from both the articles and the advertising.

For examples of outstanding style, I’d like to suggest Threads magazine and Quilting Arts from within the fiber world and Martha Stewart Living from the general magazine population. Each magazine has a distinct style; titles, headers, and sidebars are all clear, easy to find and read. The particular style QNM selects is not as important as the fact that there IS a clearly identifiable, clear, clean style. You want to attract your readers’ attention, not repel them with visual clutter that makes them toss the magazine aside in frustration or apathy. Robin Williams (the lady who writes about websites, design and typography, not the actor / comedian) is an excellent resource, and her books are available from www.amazon.com. A quick review of these books will explain far better than I can here why I think your current layout is an example of “what not to do.”

When I first “found” QNM, I loved to read where the quilt shows were; the list has grown gloriously long, so I understand why you opted to move most of that information to the web. Nonetheless, you cannot easily use your computer from the seat of your car…you can take your QNM with you and travel from one show to another (which I did in 1991 from LA to Seattle to Montana to NH to Washington, DC—my QNM my guide for my next quilty stop). If you got rid of just one of those unwelcome patterns, you could still include this fun information which I still love to browse.

I also really miss Myrna Giesbrecht’s column about websites worth visiting. Every issue, I take my copy to my computer and look up the sites. However, I have absolutely NO interest in futzing around the QNM site to read her column or anything else—I have no desire to spend even more time on the computer needlessly. I want her column in my magazine where I can read it at leisure on the sofa at night, then when I want to look things up on the web. I understand the logic of having the hotlinks right there from your website, and that’s a good addition to her article in the magazine, but it isn’t a substitute.

Please, please, please—FIX what you did to QNM! I love your magazine, and really want it to do what it has done so well. Thank Heavens Helen Kelley’s column is still there! We don’t need another pattern magazine—there are too many already. We NEED what QNM used to be, and can be again. Someone who once wrote articles for you urged me to write, saying that QNM listens to its readers. So despite misgivings about writing a critical letter, I’ve done it. I hope you accept my letter in the spirit it is intended: support, encouragement, constructive dialogue. I have three years to run on my current subscription, and I’d hate to have to cancel it. Without a sea-change in the current style and content of QNM, however, that is exactly what I’ll do. Please give us back the QNM we love, the QNM that deservedly earned a reputation as the best quilting magazine in the world. Thank you for taking the time to read this long letter.

Sincerely,
Sarah Smith

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