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Today Martha Stewart's fashion/lifestyle glossy for the Grey's Anatomy generation, Blueprint followed Jane, House & Garden and Vibe Vixen into magazine heaven. Wherefore the untimely death? What can we learn from its tasteful, cheerily minimalist time on this earth's newsstands? Right now Blueprint is probably wishing it had never been born, which is why it's the job of Moe and Guardian Editorial Angel Maria to peruse the November/December issue to remind the world what Blueprint achieved in its short eighteen-odd months in publication.
New York dubbed Blueprint the "quirkiest" of its class, but Maria wasn't feeling the quirky. ("Sugar cookies for the holidays? How INVENTIVE!") Design-wise, the magazine seems too obsessed with order and clean lines to be really, you know, DIY as the kidz say. (Notes Maria: "Their 'DIY' section involves tying satin bows around your coat.") And yet the fatal flaw was probably trying to compete with multiple existing magazines — Domino, Lucky, House & Garden — without a clear identity of its own, or really any sense that the clear identities of the magazines it was ripping off were financially viable. I mean, Lucky is a proven commodity. But Domino is still in "launch mode," and H&G is no longer with us.
Here's a page from a decorating package. Fun title, no? Glass ceilings weren't meant to be broken this holiday season! At least not when they are decorated with pretty pink chandeliers tied with satiny bows and topped with "cafe au lait" candles! Luckily (since you are never going to make as much money as your male peers!) this chandelier is modestly priced at $15 and the crystal ornaments are $3-$5 each!
The same can't be said for these coats. That little fuchsia number is $1,135 and the sleeves don't even come down all the way! (SOLUTION: Long gloves.) Anyway, pages like these, of which there are a LOT, are sort of where Blueprint gets confusing. It looks like Lucky! But are people who read Lucky also interested in recipes for sausage fennel stuffing (p. 130-131) and chandeliers, and also pink Christmas trees like the one below that we saw at Urban Outfitters? Well yes, we have met people with the time/money/anal-retentive need to excel in all fields to be interested in all those things, but those people are entirely too annoying to get their lipstick advice and their decorating advice and their lipstick-application advice from the same place.
The subtitle of this picture is "Have a Black-and-White Ball". Maybe more like white-and-your-one-black-friend ball! But here again, fashion. And it ain't cheap! In fact, there is so much more where that came from. Five more pages of this spread! A whole nother page on boots! With the surprising number of fashion items, you'd think they might have snagged a clothing-related ad or two in the issue. But um...does a Hanes ad (featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt! At least that's zeitgeisty, right?) count? Because that's all we found.
Anyway, we're sad to see you go, but Merry Christmas anyway. Why not buy a Pepto-pink Christmas tree and use it to remind yourself of all those times you broke the rules and did something totally wild and unexpected. Sure, it failed and you ended up spending the season alone eating Ciao Bella and watching old SATC DVDs, but it's perfect for that too.
Martha Stewart 'Blueprint' Folds, Very Few Mind Particularly [Gawker]
Comments
That tree is fucking shiteous.
truthfully, I'd flip out with joy for a tacky fake PINK! aluminum tree.
and all editorial faults aside, their font choices for Blueprint were fabulous. (what? I notice these things!)
When I read in the September/October issue the line "I'm someone who wouldn't think twice about buying a $400 bra" I got the feeling I didn't quite fit in.
The $1,000 jacket cements it.
That glass ceiling photo looks like a tragic fire accident waiting to happen. If you can't break through the glass ceiling, maybe you can burn it down!
@brechtgirl: yeah, I love my breasts, but more in the $50 way. Not the entire-month's-rent way.
I was a huge fan of the font Fling back in 1997 and incorporated it with Bodoni for my business collateral. Seeing that same font as the wordmark for "Blueprint"... just all types of wrong.
I'll admit it, I subscribed. The design was great -- the magazine just wasn't sure what it wanted to be. I'd actually say it was more like Real Simple than anything else, though, and I guess there just wasn't a market for two magazines telling a grown woman how to store her lingerie.
This is what Real Simple would be if RS were honest with itself.
Martha Stewart was behind that? No wonder I couldn't stand that manual for high maintenance chicks.
@brechtgirl: A $400 bra better come with hypnotizing powers. And I don't mean the kind that will get me a choice table at Le Cirque, I mean the kind that will allow me to walk out of the bank with all its money.
I liked it.
It felt slightly more virtuous to be coveting pretty things as well as learning about how to make stuffing or organize my (non-existent) home office than to flip through lucky just coveting. At least three times in the last month I have picked up lucky, because I really like looking at pretty things, but forced myself to put it right back down because it will just make me feel bad about the fact that I can't have any of them.
I am a little ashamed to have used the word virtuous to describe a feeling brought on by reading a magazine.
At least that black girl got invited. But the picture looks like the other chicks are planning on freezing her bra and sticking her hand in warm water while she sleeps.
@yidvicious: Her $500 lingerie, don't forget!
@nadarine: Ditto. I also love the pinkish/ whitewash stain on the floors in the pink tree pic. I love a "nausea heartburn indigestion upset stomach" pepto christmas.
I'm bummed. I loved Bluprint. I loved it for being a mishmash of different shit that I like.
I'm just getting over Jane, and now this? The Glamour subscription they sent me as a sub makes me want to cut someone.
Can't hate the coats but you know you can get those same ones at Target.
I actually really liked Blueprint. *sniff*
To me, it seemed slightly hipper and a little younger than Real Simple. Where Real Simple seemed practical, Blueprint was a little more aspirational ... even if I never had any plans to decorate my bedroom in a Nantucket beach theme. I'll pour a little out for you tonight, Blueprint. Give a big "what up?" to Sassy and Jane for me.
@shansypants: At least you got Glamour. Every failed mag subscription I have always defaults to Women's Day.
I still miss Budget Living...
I liked Blueprint, too. As a mixed girl, I was annoyed with how the first few issues seemed only to have a token non-white model here and there (it's marginally better now). And the early make-up stories were aimed only at the palest skin. But I think the magazine developed and it grew on me. Plus, I loved the articles on DIY organization and the spreads on people's homes.
@OnionRings: Me too! Budget Living was my favorite of all my subs (Readymade, Dwell, Domino, a brief fling with a gift subscription to Self) and when they started sending me Women's Effing Day instead, I was pissed.
WHAT THE CRAP. I subscribed to this magazine and effing loved it, especially since Domino was starting to suck. It had good music recommendations too. Dammit.
It was cute and all--they were actually considering photographing my little corner of Versailles at some point.
But I have to admit, they lost me with their stories on moveable centerpieces and yes, $400 bras. Hmph.
I'm sad and surprised to see Blueprint go. I work in magazines and saw it as a place I'd like to work eventually. It was pretty well-received within the industry (at least by most editors) and being that it was a MSLO publication, one would think that it had solid financial backing. They didn't even give it a chance to do well...when did it launch, like 18 months ago? Nov/Dec issue aside, they had some really cute DIY/crafty ideas that were right on target to the 20/30-something reader. Kind of the way Budget Living did (but these are a little more Martha-fied, for better or worse.) Anyway, I'm just sad to see it go.
Sad. I liked Blueprint better than domino, definitely. There was cheap stuff, and good ideas! And it wasn't so intimidatingly designer- ish.
And sometimes the writers would get all Sassy first- person.
Real Simple makes me feel somehow guilty that I am not zen enough.
Random magazine recommendation: the December Cooking Light! My mom picked it up and it has like a million great sounding recipes. Ok, I'm off to pour some out for Blueprint...
I loved Blueprint. It's like RS, except RS was too real and simple for me. I like a little more fantasy in my magazines ($1,500 coats). And I think an xmas tree is the perfect place for really silly hot pink shiny things, because I will inevitably get sick of the fluffy kitsch, but by then it is time to get rid of the tree anyway.
@madamequeen: December Cooking Light DOES have some awesome recipes, you are not alone mon petit haricot-vert.
Cottage Living isn't so bad. It's a similar clean-lined (but still homey with a slight retro twist) aesthetic sensibility, and the recipes are pretty good, too.
First Jane dies as soon as I subscribe, then my beloved Budget Living disappears without a trace, then the fun women's version of Vitals (they interviewed Amy Sedaris!) tanked after, what, two whole issues? - and now the fun-to-browse Blueprint is down the tubes as well?
And Allure sucks now that the heydey of the supermodel and the free makeup samples is gone.
Really? I was primed to really love Blueprint, but I found it so hollow beneath the gorgeous design. I felt like all I was reading was veiled advertising. I guess I was expecting more like a cross between MSKids and MSLiving, not Lucky.
Aww, no. I would take Blueprint over Domino any day. I loved the font and that their prices were ever slightly more realistic. Also, something about the writing in the entire Lucky clan is just...grating.
NO. NO! But I check for the new one every month! What will I check for now?!
I work at MSL, they laid off with zero notice a SHIT TON of people, 1 person I know, Kerri Mertaugh, who did outstanding design and production for BOTH magazines had been there for NINE years!!! 10 weeks severence pay, no christmas bonus, and uninvited to the company christmans party tonight, the day after the lay offs. A CEO bigwig called us all into a meeting room to let us know about it, and when asked if it would effect us at Martha Stewart Living, he wouldnt give us a straight answer and acted very weird suddenly, so now everyone is tripping over their own dicks to be the first rat off that sinking ship. They underpay everyone except a few inept lackeys who only have jobs because they know martha. 1 girl, Isabel, an associate art director, makes about half as much as someone with the same exp working at say, Conde Nast. The whole place is fucked. STAY AWAY!!!! SERIOUSLY!!!
It was an ok magazine, but the employees that worked there should have been treated better in the lay offs.
For everyone who misses Budget Living magazine, I found a couple of BL books here [www.bookcloseouts.com]
Lucky is crappy and ugly and ghetto compared to Blueprint. Domino is sort of the same way, much better ideas, but the design is sort of ill-conceived and sort of icky.
I suppose that means I can cross a subscription renewal off of my xmas list... At least I won't be getting unwanted issues of glamour in its place.
I only ever saw one edition of Blueprint (free, at work). I still have it, as I'm doing my year-end project of cleaning up all the magazines I've saved through the year, and so I can give you an exact quote to illustrate what bothered me so much about it. From the editor's letter on page 2 of the May/June '07 edition: "When I describe Blueprint to airplane seatmates . . . or cocktail-party chatter-uppers, or anyone else who claims to have never seen our magazine and thinks it's an architectural periodical (where have they been?), I say . . . [blah blah blah]." I thought, wow, way to alienate a new reader for implying that they are an idiot to have never heard of your magazine or are for some unfathomable reason lying about not having seen it. Yuck. I found the magazine to be really twee, and was not surprised when I saw that it was a Martha Stewart creation. I did turn down 4 or 5 pages that had things I wanted to follow up on, but as I look at them now, they're all just references to store websites -- nothing worth keeping as far as the actual content of the magazine. Not my style at all! (But then, I never really liked Jane, either. I guess I wasn't the target demographic or something, because I found it unbearable, even for browsing through while waiting at the doctor's office!)
Bleh. Blueprint always looked to me like Readymade, except for people who want to buy cute design-y crafts instead of making them.
I so totally love that pink tree, with all the bubbles and happy! Oh, pink champagne on a tree! Glory.
Oh how sad!!! I'm a designer and crafty and all that, and this magazine was just so well layed out and clean, and the content was just FUN. I'm going to miss you, blueprint. I'll light a candle in your honor tonight.
I quite liked Blueprint. It had some good, do-it-yourself ideas that were unusual and fun, even if the Christmas issue was a bit twee.
Domino is the one I can't stand. Too obsessed with socialites and celebrities and how they live, and that's just plain out of my league!
I used to work at a craft store, and they had all the Martha Stewart magazines. Blueprint always struck me as a plot to breed baby Marthas. It would lure them in with cute clothes and easy decorating tips, and next thing they know they're making their own candles and buying expensive-ass paper trimmers.
For design, I actually really like House Beautiful (ducks). I am not one to pretend that I am still some struggling bohemian despite my West Village townhouse, so Domino does not appeal to me. HB has actual color advice; it is not just "Let's peer into this socialite's over-designed apartment that she paid someone else to do but takes all the credit for it." Okay, HB has those articles too. There is a grey smugness to Domino, at least HB admits to it.
Not a fan of MS. I subscribed to MSL years ago but I could never lived up to that. Shudder.
Dammit--I just PAID for my new subscription and haven't even gotten one issue yet! NOOOOOOOOO! Now they're gonna try to shove Everyday Food (I'm no ED girl but seriously, their "regular" recipes are not healthy enough for "Every Day" and their "healthy" recipes are pabulum) down my throat instead. And I will miss Blueprint. It was fun and not in interior design lalala land when it came to pricepoint or fugliness (I'm looking at YOU, Domino.) Time to go pout with red wine.
Awwwwwwww, and I had just discovered the joy of taking on one project from the magazine every month and real personizing it. Aww, Blueprint. I loved (and loved making fun of) you.
OK, I was inspired to get all inventive with my dinner in honor of Blueprint, and now I am back!
It made me so happy to be called a haricot-vert as a term of endearment, thanks, sister!
So I popped over to Blueprint's site- their blog, Bluelines, which is great, is continuing!! So at least we have that.
@yes tim gunn: I just paid for my subscription too in a fit of magazine subscription ordering/renewing madness -- gotta get those year-end business expenditures in! Blueprint, r.i.p.
Buy a Blueprint and get a discount in both Prevention AND Readers Digest. Fortunately for the readers of this rubbish AARP is free.
aww, i loved blueprint too. it was kinda the martha stewart-ness for the lazy generation. why diy when you can buy something that looks like you did it! they really did have some good ideas though - maybe this was a really really bad month, with the pink tree and all. oh well. blueprint, i will forever hold your memory dear.....
Blueprint seemed like the new millenium version of those films in which Doris Day was an interior designer, wore matching coats hats dresses gloves, spike heels and drove a two-seater convertible, then changed into strapless evening gowns at the drop of a hat. Totally nonsensical and yet, if you squinted real hard, you might get an idea from it.