Did you feel the earth shake? I opened my mailbox this evening and nearly dropped my mail in the street: My new issue of Southern Living had arrived...and it was perfect-bound.

For years, Rex has cited Southern Living's saddle stitching as an anomaly in the magazine industry. It makes more sense for large magazines to perfect-bind -- meaning the edge of the magazine is flat like a book binding -- than to saddle-stitch, using staples down the middle.

But for years, though Southern Living regularly runs well over 100 pages, they've continued to saddle-stitch. The conventional wisdom has said, It's not broken, so they're not fixing it. Through slumps in the magazine industry, Southern Living held steady on ads and subscriptions, so why mess with a formula that was working?

According to an article in Media Week last fall, SL has finally felt the economic effects that hit other magazines far more frequently. The redesign in my mailbox today is aimed at a younger demographic than their average reader [over 50 now], hoping to attract new advertisers and subscribers.

From the looks of it, they're aiming at the Seven Sisters magazines [the ones you think of when you think "women's magazine" -- Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook and Woman's Day]] and perhaps a little at O, Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living. They've expanded a section on healthy living into a regular feature. And the interior design -- well you'd easily think you're flipping through Family Circle unless you looked at the folio.

I don't say that as a negative; I think the new design is a nice, fresh look and it fits the content well. I can't wait to hear about the reaction from Southern Living readers, though. SL's design has been so stable for so long that although many of these changes are subtle in and of themselves, the very fact of a change may hit some readers in the face. They've even changed their font for body copy.

But me, well, I'm all about change. I say, good job, and congratulations for taking the leap! For more, get Rex's take. Like me, he's now curious to see how the market will react:

Why did Time Inc. allow Southern Living to stick with saddle stitching for so long? ...here’s my semi-educated guess: Time Inc. has been afraid to anger the tens of thousands of readers who have vast collections of past issues of the magazine displayed on bookcases. ... Again, that’s a theory. Surely, the Southern Living folks went beyond the typical reader research to isolate collectors of the magazine to gauge what their response will be. They did, surely? If not, this should be a very interesting experiment in what happens when one ignores the obvious.