Title: Real Living
Publisher: Bauer Media Australia/Cornelia Schulze
Editor: Deborah Bibby
Issue: September 2015 (10th birthday edition)
Total pages: 212
Ad pages: 57 (Some of them are hard to pick from editorial, which is why advertisers love this magazine)
Cover mount: Three bespoke designer greeting cards worth $21
Cover lines that work: $125,000+ in prizes to be won, Styles you never thought you’d have in your home
Cover price: $7.50 (bargain)
Subscription offer: 12 issues for $59.95 PLUS a free Raine & Humble waffle throw (doesn’t make waffles!) worth $79.95
Real Living has been one of the magazines that really shows off why some brands are best enjoyed in their print form. There is just too much going on to be able to grasp it all properly going from page to page on an iPad, and people who love this magazine are sure to want to rip out at least a couple of pages each month for either a shopping expedition or their design folders at home.
Editor Bibby and her team deliver a dazzling array of products every 30 days for readers which each carefully photographed and catalogued with pricing plus stockist details carefully curated in the back of the book.
This month’s editorial highlights include a designer who transformed her home with neutral tones and an industrial theme (we are not sure about those overpriced SMEG fridges though), a style guide for kids’ rooms, home workspaces (hang on – that’s an ad for Officeworks!) and a massive 11-page section with 66 prizes for readers which must have taken a small army quite some time to assemble.
The wonderful homes section has some very inspirational properties complete with floor plans and price guides. The rooms section is filled with everything from fashion to lighting this month and there is a great feature with the best picks of the season from buyers at homewares and design stores. Sophie Holt from Country Road tells about a fave cutlery set and a marble clock. We want to live in the wood house too.
The back of the book features the eat section (what they ate at the mag’s 10th BD party), Outside which almost creates an urban jungle, and a kitchen and bathroom section with five designer kitchens and four designer bathrooms.
We like this magazine…a lot.
Digital: The magazine offers plenty of multimedia extras for readers wanting to use the viewa app from either the App Store or Google Play. The magazine also publishes a newsletter.
Real Living seems to be part of Bauer Media’s homestolove.com.au portal. On Facebook the brand has 96,000 likes with posts every few days. There are close to 10,000 followers on its Pinterest page, 62,000 followers to its Instagram account and nearly 13,000 have signed up to receive its Tweets.