Website: www.ikea.co.uk
Cost: £2 (or free to IKEA Family members)
98 pages plus cover
Strapline: Wake up with Spring energy!
Recipes: none, unless you count using salt, olive oil, lemon and white wine vinegar (no, not all at once) for cleaning.
Favourite article: Time Out in Tokyo - it made me want to repaint my living room in green.
Not an obvious choice to start the whole project off - but it was just the first thing that I picked up and read in March. And I actually read it cover to cover - it's surprisingly good, if you're after some cheap and easy design/furniture ideas for your home.
There's lots of bright, colourful photography, some nicely written text, and it's not overwhelmed with advertising (mainly because the whole thing is one big advert for IKEA, I suppose).
But at least with this kind of magazine you know what you're getting. Yes, it'll advertise IKEA products - but actually I like the fact that it's upfront about that. I'm sure there's no pressure whatsoever on most glossies to feature products from their advertisers. Not.
So much for the good stuff. On the downside, for a magazine that claims to feature "52 pages of real homes", far too many of them just happen to have owners who are involved in design in some way. Let's see what their job titles are, shall we?
full-time mother and part-time editorial assistant/full-time banker and part-time mountain guide
freelance interiors coordinator/corporate development
retired lighting shop owners
interior designer for IKEA
copywriter/designer for a Swedish fashion company/research consultant
I suppose I shouldn't complain too much - it's better than the usual double-barrelled twits who are renovating their second homes in Dorset with handmade tiles and heritage colour paints. At least this lot give you some affordable ideas without pretension. And they're pleasingly European, so I can't complain about the usual bias towards people who live within a 50-mile radius of the M25.
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