Design classics

The Royal Mail has issued a new set of stamps celebrating the best of British design, partly to encourage more people to get into stamp collecting.

I think these are a great bit of design in themselves, illustrating classics such as the Mini, red phonebox, Penguin paperback and anglepoise lamp in a space no bigger than, well, a postage stamp.

And the Guardian has gone one further and mocked up a few other design icons it would like to see dropping through our front doors...

Jamie magazine

When I went away for New Year, and in the absence of anything else, I bought the first edition of the new Jamie Oliver magazine, called funnily enough 'Jamie'.

Only on sale in WHSmith, there's not much to say about this that hadn't already been, so I was curious to see what I would make of it. And briefly, it went something like this:

1. Buy magazine and remove wrap holding catalogue of new 'Jme' kitchen products to magazine.
2. 11 pages in, arrive at first feature about ham sold by one of Jamie's mates, followed by a special reader offer (only £60 for a ham!)
3. Browse photos of Jamie's new Italian restaurant opening in Bath, Jamie's poker night with other professional geezas like Dexter Fletcher, and his meeting with the designers of the new Jme collection (see attached brochure).
4. Cringe at 'interview' with Jamie's "mate", Brad Pitt.
5. Get to recipes with some cracking photographs, but not actually written by Jamie.
6. Browse a special six-page feature on some new expensive chopping boards, surprise from Jme (see attached brochure).
7. A 'review' of a mate's restaurant in London, by Jamie himself.
7. Detatch pull-out meal calendar planner thingy.
8. Titter at back page article by 'the missus', Jules.

Like his books, it is fantastically designed, all full of loving, oozing short-focus shots of food and clearly the bloke is passionate about what he does, but it still left me feeling a little 'used'. The non-stop references to the other wings of his empire made it feel less like a magazine than a sales tool designed to deliver you to his retail bits and bobs.

Tricks have been missed- how could you trust a restaurant review of one his mate's places? And he went in person, so hardly inconspicuous! And the only mention of wine was an article on compliling a pricey wine case for your newborn child - be nice to read about some we could enjoy before, say, 2027.

And the meal planner was made almost entirely of recipies lifted from Jamie's cookbooks - so if you're a Jamie fan (and let's face it, likely if you've bought a magazine with his mugshot on it), you'll have them all and probably tried them all already.

So food porn yes, vanity project almost certainly, but having said all that, for £3.95 it's probably something you could put with your other cookbooks and flick through from time to time. Whether people will buy it every other month is another story.