The Chatelaine cover is brutal. Too many different type sizes/colours/fonts, and lets face it, the badly exposed and poorly composed image used for the cover image is no better than any shapshot you see on Facebook. Whoever coughed up this "fresh new look" should be sent back to design school. It's awful - full stop.

The Canadian Living cover is fine - nice picture, nice type treatment, nice use of colour .... just very 'safe' and traditional. Kind of a polite way of saying zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Neither one really stands out. Kind of makes me pine for seeing Obama with a red dot clown nose again.

Canibeanonifimspecific, thanks. That's the informed style of analysis I'd expect to see more of on a site such as this!

@Comment Police: pfft, this is the least of the challenges we mag publishing management should be concerned about

Canadian Living's cover is elegant, and striking for the unusual treatment of the magazine title � without skybar, or distinctly demarcating the top of the cover from the rest. That says on-trend. The image looks like a deliberate evocation of nostalgia all the rage now (eg TV show Mad Men).

Chatelaine (or Chat�in..) is also cohesive in colour and also uses the main image to tie in the above-the-title space with the rest of the cover, but less strikingly. It's overall layout says past, not future or present. The woman does exude energy, even with the missing elbow.

Canadian Living's coverlines are more direct and punchy; Chatelaine's rely on further explanation in a subhed that isn't always necessary � for example, "The New Sex Drugs" could have stood alone. They could have reduced the text clutter a lot with rewordings such as "Let Go of Toxic Friends".

Both fail at matching/integrating the coverlines with the image, unless Chatelaine's is meant to illustrate great skin. The covered-up model certainly doesn't say anything about beach-ready. Canadian Living's cake fits neither "fresh start" (not fresh, and cakes are end-of-meal) nor dinners-under-$15, unless very obscurely.

@ Vive Les Anonymists: I think you're being a tad generous when you say "Chatelaine's cover pops with life and energy"

Yes, it would be so much more easier to know who to blacklist or fire if the employees had to post under their real names. Such are the challenges faced by management in magazine publishing these days.

Hello Val. I would absolutely suggest that Anonymous be removed. However, with that being said, the only way you could prevent people from making up a name would be to follow a business model like TSN where you have to register before you can post. Seems the same naysayers are constantly chiming in. Would be an entire different environment where employers could actually see their employees posting all these comments.

The Canadian Living cover is elegant, yes, but also lifeless and boring. Chatelaine's cover pops with life and energy. Other than the magazine's unreadable logo.

@Mark Oaks & R2d2: most sites allow anon comments, as long as they are moderated, which they are here. Stop allowing them and watch the comments (which are already a slow trickle at best) and Masthead's traffic dry up completely. At least some people care enough to stop in and read and comment, and as long as they stay focused on the work and not make it personal, I say there's nothing wrong with it. Nature of the beast in this medium.

There's a reason it's called "critique." When you have magazine people examining magazine covers, you're going to get a lot of nitpicking and very few love letters. No malice intended, just a very tough audience! I look at the two covers above and I see very good work that I respect -- but what jumps out at me is that the flag for Can Living is just a touch too small for the page, and that the cover lines on Chatelaine look a dog's breakfast (after the dog threw it up). Waddaya gonna do, eh?

As a guy I am more into food than womens fashion, so I'd lean heavily to the Canadian Living cover. I am curious as to why so much coverage of the Chatelaine name was approved - looks very bad to me. There also seems to be a lot of text on the Chatelaine cover, which appears too busy. I do like the soft cool colors of Canadian Living - maybe an attempt to cool off and relax readers during the hot summer months?

@ Mark Oaks,@R2d2: what would you propose as a solution? No longer allowing anonymous comments?

When people can make comments under an Anonymous name, you get all the "wannabees" chiming in. I would love to research all the comments that have been posted on this site and compare how many constructive critiques have been provided compared to the negative. I agree with R2D2.

This site could be subtitled "The hate collector". Sheesh.

Same old same old. These covers could have run 20 years ago, for all I know.

The Chatelaine cover reminds me of the very first magazine I ever bought myself -- Seventeen magazine with Niki Talyor on the cover in the mid-90s. So much for fresh and new, Chatelaine.

Canadian Living has a much more advanced sense of text treatment, and overall appears believably authoritative. Chatelaine looks harsh, clumsy, cliche, and crude; and much like Glow used to under the same editor and same art direction.

Just a question re Chatelaine's new look: How wise is it to cover up most of the logo with the image, for a redesign cover/issue?
I do like the limited and simple use of colors in the text to complement the image, though.

Mag Love what's wrong with the fifties??? They were the hay days of the print media especially the fashion mags. They gave us all the glamour and those beautiful faces.

I like Canadian Living, but I am 100% sure I have seen that exact same poppyseed cake shot before.

And Chatelaine's new look is neither fresh nor new, unless a skinny, youngish blond is so in it's out it's in?

Neither. Both covers are dated and look like they are from the 1950s. This industry needs new faces and fast.

Where did her elbow go on Chatelaine's cover? Looks like someone went too far with Photoshop. Also, not sure you can compare to completely different covers, when one has food on it (which Canadian Living is known for) and the other has an actual person. Don't think it's a fair match.

To be honest, I don't like either of them.