I would like to voice my opinion regarding the new look, I'm going to preface this by saying that I will try to be constructive about this.
I'll start with the cover;
PGI recently has had really good action shots of top players in dramatic photos playing the game, this hasn't changed. I think this works very well, much better and more creditable than a 'staged' shot.
The font is a little boring, And I'd like to see the World Tour/Gspot in a larger font. I don't like colour used for those two titles, and on the dotted I in 'Paintball' I'd like to see something more 'fire engine red'. I'm not a big fan of Magenta, it's not a natural colour, and it's not very 'tasty either.
Don't mind the title at the top, it's growing on me. However I feel the old style was stronger, with the white fill and black outline. I guess the new title will show up well on a magazine shelf, where only the top few inches are visible.
Going thru the magazine, and comparing it to PGI 173, it's not that different. There seems to be a lot more text, which is good, because PGI's strength in the past year has been it's written content. In the past most text has been black on white background. Graphically this is the easiest thing to read, the least jarring on the eye.
I notice a lot of Magenta, again this colour is unnatural, and lacks a certain appeal. White lettering on Magenta is really hard to read.
A final note, on the subject of text, there are a lot of columns of black text with white backgrounds, that have magenta boxes in the middle with white text. The type in these 'coloured background' boxes seems to be a tight fit. It makes the text even harder to read, and jars the reader when switching from regular text to highlighted text. A larger margin in these spaces would help a lot!
Another strength of PGI has been it's photos. I guess somebody has been playing around with Photoshop, and some filters, cause there's some very artsy editing done to the photos, which are generally very good. However, there are no borders to the photos, and often their composure on the page looks scrap book style, and less professional than in the past. It looks a bit edgier, a bit more like an independent underground magazine, than a mainstream paintball mag. A good example of the scrap book look, is on page 22/23 (all turn there now please) where there is a white line visible between the bar of grey with the title 'trash mouth' and the text below, saying 'end of the millennium'. There's also some edge anti-alaising on the t-shirts in the middle of the page that doesn't look to hot (white fuzzy bits FYI) in the 'seat of your pants' column. It's little details like this that give it a look that's I feel is a step back from the cleanness of PGI past.
I'm now going through the articles, noting the good and bad things.
Trash mouth 16/17
Nice use of black and white, (for those who don't know, black and white photos generally symbolise something that happened in the past), I really like the layout of this page, easy to read, but I don't like the grey and magenta that is used for the titles.
I really like the P8talk page, this one rocks leave it as is! Easy to read, but graphically different from everything else in the magazine.
Don't like the back ground colour on the 'exposed' page, 28/29
Next to the font on the PMI add on the next page, the yellow looks dirty. Another colour would have been a better choice. Good photos though.
Most wanted on pages 33-43 is really good, I like the cardboard cut-out style, and the western font on the title. The only thing I don't like (whole mag thing) is the font with no holes in the lettering. Stylish? yes, but hard to read.
And white on grey is much harder to read than black on grey.
Nice photos in 'Dope' (page 55) but I don't like the Magenta
Tech report is good, but here I don't like the photos. I want to see how good (or bad) the gun actually looks, and the black and white grain photos don't do that. The other thing that falls down here is the placement of the photos, and where their edges line up. I feel that borders look cleaner, and give a sense of containment. Maybe a matter of personal taste, but I don't like it.
Storm chases looks great, and so does the nexion review, apart from details I've mentioned.
I like play the odds, well written article, and nice photos.
Tactics and technique (right after the new Dye clothing advert) is very good, but could benefit from slightly bigger margins on the white background around the text.
Like the photos, very good again.
Tourist is good, wet and wild is awesome!
I like the black and white with the pink highlights on page 94, and Bow blasting the French fry on 95 is probably the photo of the year. You guys gotta get that one on a t-shirt!
I like the black and whites with the colour tints, these photos are great.
The review of Sweden is good, I like that blue colour that is banding across the second page, but it cuts a bit tight to the text at the bottom of the blue bits, making the text hard to read. Details I know, but it makes a big difference.
The x-ball nations cup review is excellent, I really like it.
The black and white on 122/123 is great, showing eliminated players in black and white is very artsy, thumbs up for that shot.
To summarise, PGI 175 looks very experimental.
I think the biggest problem is the advertising, it clashes with the style of the magazine. Basically Paintball is about black and chrome, or bright primary colours. The PGI layout seems to consist of more subtle colours, less saturated overall, and compared to the adverts it seems dirty and less glamorous in some places.
I would strongly suggest that you drop the grey and Magenta motif, as I said before Magenta isn't a natural or desirable colour. A light or pale blue, with a strong go faster red would perhaps work better, anything but Magenta!
I think the font with the holes I the letters filled in is growing on me. It suits the style.
Larger borders, to give the text space to breath a bit would be nice. I found this mag a bit hard on the eyes text wise, hopefully you guys will sort that out for the next issue.
Overall, very bold, but I don't expect most people to like it. It's got too many subtleties for the 'common' paintballer to appreciate, and I suspect that we'll see some modifications to the layout style for the next issue. But you guys disserve credit for trying something new.
Sorry for the length of the post, I just got tired of the peons saying they didn't like it and not explaining why.
