• by Erik Sass , January 26, 2009

Editor in Chief Sally Lee said the redesigned magazine will be "modern, clean, approachable and uplifting." Reading between the lines, Meredith Corp. is retooling the venerable women's title to make it more competitive during a sharp economic downturn. Is that a realistic goal?

On the editorial side, the Ladies' Home Journal redesign introduces new sections and columns, such as "Anatomy of a Splurge," comparing expensive products with more affordable equivalents. It's also adding more coverage of home, wellness, nutrition and food issues, and a new, more personally engaging approach to cover headlines and tags.

On the visual side, the redesign includes new typefaces and new photographic and illustration sections.

Meredith hopes the redesign will help turn around a steep slide in ad pages, which fell 20.3% in 2008 compared to 2007 to 1,232, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. The redesign is also supposed to halt the recent decline in total readership, which fell from 14.3 million in fall 2005 to 13.4 million in fall 2008--a 6% drop. Yet a review of some big magazine redesigns over the last few years suggests that revamps do not have much of an impact on ad sales or readership.

Time magazine unveiled a new design in March 2007, with a new look and an editorial approach that included more opinion and commentary. However, it didn't seem to have produced gains in audience or ad pages. According to Mediamark Research and Intelligence, in fall 2008, Time had a readership of 20.8 million, compared to 21.4 million in fall 2006--a modest 3% decline. According to PIB, ad pages fell 19% in 2008 compared to 2007, to 1,752.

To revitalize the magazine and spur reader interest, Newsweek also introduced a major redesign with its Oct. 22, 2007 issue, including less visual clutter, longer articles, fewer images and clearer headings. The editors tried to scale up the magazine's intellectual content; they introduced three new columns on food, parenting and technology. But like Time, this did not do much to slow its decline. According to MRI,Newsweek's total audience fell from 19 million in fall 2007 to 18.5 million in fall 2008, also slipping 3%. Ad pages at Newsweek also fell 19% in 2008, to 1,506.

More recently, The Atlantic was redesigned in November 2008, with the goal of making the famously highbrow title a little less stuffy and a little more eye-catching. It's too soon to tell whether there has been a significant impact on its readers, but advertisers didn't seem particularly impressed. After an 11.9% drop in ad pages in the third quarter of 2008, the decline accelerated with an 18.8% drop in the fourth quarter.

Dwell underwent an eye-catching redesign in February 2008; although MRI audience figures aren't available for the hip shelter title, ad pages fell 11.9% in 2008 compared to 2007. Health magazine got a redesign around the same time, which debuted with its March 2008 issue--revealing a new logo, new editorial categories and an updated, more streamlined general look. Between fall 2007 and fall 2008, its total audience was basically flat, slipping from 7.7 million to 7.6 million. Ad pages at Health fell 12.2% from 2007-2008, to 997.

Enthusiast and tech titles do not get much of a bump from redesigns either. Wired got a redesign in January 2007, which mainly focused on more provocative photography and illustration. Ad pages did grow modestly from 2006-2007--up 2.6%--but the effect was transient, followed by a 12.6% drop in 2008. In April 2006, Ziff Davis' PC got a redesign introducing new sections, columns and original photography, as well as a fresh graphic-design concept. But after ad pages plunged 36% in the first half of 2008, the print edition was closed. The brand lives on online.