MEDIA: LIMB BY LIMB - AN EXPERT’S VIEW. Limb by Limb’s first issue lacks sophistication and style, Michael Aneto writes

Despite what you are about to read, I really wanted to like Limb by

Limb.

I’d like to think I am in its target market (’young urban thinker,’

apparently), I always got on well with its editor, Jasper Gibson, when

we were at university together, and the prospect of a new vehicle that

reaches a difficult bunch is always welcome.

The aim of Limb is to place itself apart from the rest of the men’s

magazine market by giving us a ’definitive report on the state of modern

Britain’ and ’something to read rather than to flick through’.

Sitting reading Limb on the tube, the title itself had the entire

carriage looking at me strangely. You could see them marvelling at how

real my legs looked.

But Limb is a hotchpotch of pretentious editorial, odd pictures and

unreadable text. ’So what?’ I hear you cry, ’i-D, Dazed and Confused and

The Face have done that for years.’ My point exactly.

It tries so hard to be visually different from the core lads’ mags such

as FHM and Maxim but it ends up a pale imitation of the more leftfield

titles in the market. With a cover price of pounds 2.40, only 10p less

than The Face, I cannot see why anyone would choose Limb over its more

polished rivals.

To be fair, some of the subjects covered in the launch issue were

actually quite interesting and incorporated an Esquire/GQ type of

selection. What irks is the lack of journalistic sophistication and

overly shoddy repro, or is that supposed to be part of the irony,

man?

I got the feeling that parts of the mag had been copied straight from

the internet. For example, a regular feature is an obituary column that

satirises Hello!, wittily called ’Goodbye!’. I see what you’ve done

there, brilliant. Other parts were so far up their own arse I could

practically hear tonsils being tickled.

As the men’s market matures, current readers and advertisers are looking

for the next big thing. Limb has a few major issues to address if it is

going to become that option. Otherwise, no-one will buy it - apart from

the editor’s old university chums, of course.

Publisher: Speakeasy Media

Frequency: Bi-monthly

Cover Price: pounds 2.40

Print run: 25,000

Ad rates full-page colour: pounds 5,500

Full-page mono: pounds 1,850

Advertisers include: Ikon footwear, lastminute.com, Peter Werth, Circus

restaurant.