New look, same values
If you’ve just picked up this magazine for the first time: thank you, and congratulations on discovering the original mountain magazine. We’ve been publishing the best content on hiking, hillwalking and backpacking for 44 years, and you join us as we embark on an exciting new stage in our long-distance trek across the decades.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll probably have spotted that we look a bit different. After a good while in development, we’re proud to unveil our new cover style and logo.
With both, we’ve aimed to strike a balance between continuity and change. Our new logo is not a million miles away from our old one, but we think it does a better job of conveying what we’re all about: open spaces, wild places, and soul-restoring adventurous freedom. At first glance, you might look at those fonts and think of the wide expanses of the American west, maybe the gleaming granite heights of the Sierra Nevada or the wild drama of the Rockies. This is deliberate – we are a British magazine (with a natural, but not exclusive, lean towards the Highlands of Scotland, where most of Britain’s mountains congregate); but our spiritual inspiration has always drawn from influences over the Atlantic, and that school of thought which gave birth to national parks, long-distance trails and the ‘outdoor movement’ as we know it. However, there are inspirations closer to home, too – those posters from the early 20th Century promoting mass trespasses in the Peak District, for example, which did so much to blaze a path for the right of access to British mountains that we now enjoy. So if that logo also makes you think of the earthy gritstone and peat bog of Kinder Scout, that’s certainly a good thing in our book.
Our overall cover format has also gone through a few changes too (many thanks to photographer Daniel Toal for capturing the wonderful Lake District imagery that gets this new look off to a spectacular start). And whilst we haven’t altered much else inside the issue this month – there’s only so much you can do in one four-week cycle! – these visual changes shouldn’t be seen as simply cosmetic. They are one, albeit noticeable and symbolic, part of a wider process of overhaul that has been going on for the last couple of years and has seen our circulation go up, our online audience grow, our contributor base expand and diversify, our content evolve, and revenues get to a healthy place.
There are a few more tweaks on the way, so watch this space. But, ultimately, our core values are the same: thoughtfulness, authenticity, independence, and deep awe at – and respect for – the natural world. The way we project those values is evolving, as everything must, but they remain as relevant as ever.