Fast Company Magazine: Ads vs. Content

Benjamin W.

September 30, 2009

A scan of the most recent cover of Fast Company with a hand drawn tally of how many ads there are versus how much content.

A scan of the most recent cover of Fast Company with a hand drawn tally of how many ads there are versus how much content.

I’m a big fan of the Fast Company site. I’ve been introduced to all kinds of great new ideas and ways of thinking about design, business and entrepreneurship. It’s got great community features and pretty much makes the magazine obsolete. And here’s why…

I went through the most recent issue of Fast Company (October, 2009) and 33% of it is ads. A THIRD! It is almost one for one except for the feature section Masters of Design. But up until then, the ads we’re winning.

Is this surprising to anyone else? If I bought this on the stand for $4.99, a third of what I just paid my hard earned cash for is 54 full page ads.

Barnes and Noble should have created Amazon. Tower Records should have come up with iTunes. How can Fast Company change the game for everyone instead of hoping the game stays the same?

Letter Case

Graphic Design & Web Design

Letter Case was my one-man design shop based in Los Angeles, CA.
I ran it for 2 years until I joined Typekit in January 2011.

In my spare time I've been learning to program by building my first web application.
A simple tool called Talkative to help people publish their talks on the web.

If you have any comments, thoughts or questions,
feel free to contact me at: benthomaswelch [at] gmail.com.

Thanks for checking out my blog. Cheers!

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