New year, new logo for Shanghai Talk

And at least one person (a former editor of the magazine) hates it:

With a New Year often comes a new look. Shanghai Talk, the city's longest running English language listings magazine, has rolled out a new logo with its January issue. A quick glance begs the question: which art school dropout slumming around town crapped this one out?

The talk bubble concept of the logo is not a bad one to go with. It has potential to be creative, bold, impactful. But the artwork execution here is just plain lame and uninspiring. ...

It just doesn't fit. By most measures of graphic design creativity, it simply stinks, and is hardly indicative of the spirit of the rest of the magazine. What gives?

Our thoughts on the new logo? Meh. Which was also our reaction to the old one. Neither one does much for us. In the attached image, the new logo is on the bottom. Shanghai Talk did not change the size of the magazine, however, so it will still be "the big one."

In other local magazine news:

• Not too long ago City Weekend added its magazine content onto its new website, a very good move. CW's site is easily the best of the local mags. Admittedly, that wasn't a difficult feat to pull off, but they have a very clean, user-friendly interface and a lot of the content is user-generated — they understand how the internet works. CW's site the first place we look to for venue listings, too. We use it almost every day.
• We should mention that SH is upgrading its web game big-time, too. It doesn't seem to be 100% ready for action, but the mag has a new domain and a new online look: shmag.cn. You can view their previous site here. We haven't clicked around the new site much yet, but it looks like a major improvement.