The Independent on Sunday has undergone somewhat of a transformation since I last picked it up. Despite the cover price rising from £1 to £1.40 in what seemed like a very short period of time (less than one year, my sense of time tells me), my loyalty to the paper was maintained not only by the arts (and in particular film) writing, but also the wonderful design.
(My weekly purchase of the saturday version, however, did not continue, despite the weekly column of Howard Jacobson only appearing in that paper, mainly for the notable lack of content when compared to, say, the Saturday Times or Guardian).
Today's paper and re-design was initially very disappointing: my favourite section - LifeEtc. - and my favourite supplement - Talk of the Town - have each been discontinued and amalgamated into a hybrid magazine supplement, known as ABC (arts, books and culture). The rest of the paper is relatively unchanged, meaning that the Sindie comprises: the main news section, sportsweek, timeoff (the travel section), business, the Sunday review and ABC.
I was never a fan of the Sunday review, except for Eating Out by Terry Durack, the lost world of Michael Bywater and her indoors/him outdoors by Emily Perkins and Simon Carr respectively; which is to say that I don't like all those parts that can only be fitted in to the sunday review and not included successfully elsewhere. My fear was that ABC, therefore, was going to be too much of a mismatch, resulting in some sort of compromise affecting the arts coverage with the introduction of some wishy-washy, wallpaper-esque "you must buy this", supposedly life-enhancing design waffle. To my surprse and relief, this has turned out not to be the case and depsite the slightly inconsistent maintenance of the Talk of the Town design jarring with the old LifeEtc. layout, the magazine has turned out to be a compact (read handy) and still enjoyable read.
The paper is of the usual grainy, matt finish - exactly that of the sunday review - which has taken away some of the appeal of TotT, but now that this supplement is available throughout the country instead of just inside the M25, some of the north-south divide imbalance has been redressed. Plus, I assume that the new supplement is cheaper to produce and will therefore halt any cover price increases for the long-term future.
