Shedding Gathered Moss

Neon Memes • As part of the current economic quakes rocking the magazine industry and everything else, Rolling Stone altered its format last month, going from saddle-stitched to perfect binding and shrinking from its distinctive 10 by 11.75 inches to the 8 by 10.75 common to most other publications. In the first "new look" issue, that of October 30, editor/publisher Jann S. Wenner confessed, "The large format [adopted in 1981] was one of Rolling Stone's trademarks...and it is not without a wistful feeling of sweet memories of those days that we make this change." Well, no duh, Mr. W! The alteration has left me as a long-time reader royally discombobulated. In particular, the new format has established, forcefully, the degree to which the proportions of the magazine's logo functioned as a visual standard for me. Admittedly, I haven't been following Rolling Stone since its founding in 1967 or even since '81. Still, the cover of the second reformatted issue (November 13) nearly traumatized me. Against the magazine's shrunken logo, the head of Angus Young looked freakishly large, as if AC/DC's kelly-clad 5-foot-2 frontman were going Lou Ferrigno. Most disquieting. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor