Nuts was the clear winner of the Cover of the Month for December, with the excellent Homes & Gardens and TV & Satellite week both divisional winners.

Christmas double issues are a big deal in publishing, and as in recent years, Nuts has pulled out all the stops. The logo is sparkly ‘Nutsian’ foil, the girls are pictured in a genuine winter wonderland, and the penguins were flown in specially.Nuts is a provocative magazine, and that’s no bad thing. The great designer Tibor Kalman once said: ‘When you make something no one hates, no one loves it’.

 But people do love Nuts for many good reasons. Sure, there are pictures of girls wearing very little, but that does not make it the same as  Zoo, Loaded, FHM or even GQ. The Nuts tone is knowing, self deprecating and genuinely funny. That’s why it outsells every other men’s magazine two to one.

 Art director Simon Freeborough’s typography is perfectly judged. Suitably ironic (check out The Beano), and yet still possessing enough punch to stand out on the newsstand. Likewise, editor Dom Smith has enough confidence in his brand to let Nuts alone deliver the splash line, instead of the more usual ‘Sophie presents…’.

This is a terrific cover, and a worthy winner.

Here are the other two winners…

The IPC Editors’ Group’s winning covers of the month for October are Chat, InStyle and Rugby World, with Chat voted the overall winner. Editorial development director Andy Cowles explains why the IPC Connect weekly got the vote:

I do wonder about the ease with which Chat’s editor Gilly Sinclair peels off her brilliant coverlines. ‘My bum needs its own sofa’, ‘Sliced Off! I castrated my evil dad’, ‘Saved from the pot! What a lucky plucker…’. It all seems to suggest an imagination that frankly, I’d rather not know too much about!

Much like a tabloid newspaper, in a real-life weekly it’s often the words are the most important visual component. It is they that create images in your mind, they that deliver colour, and they that determine the layout of the page.

Right from the very first issue (Knit your own Royal Family!) Chat’s lines have always been a shrewd blend of knowing gags, weird shit and truly shocking ideas. It’s voyeuristic, nihilistic, and often entirely unrealistic. Like its readers, it really does live in the moment, as evidenced by the genius strapline: ‘Life! Death! Prizes!’

But the world is becoming ever more visual, so Chat has responded with this new and significantly improved cover design. The key decision is to make the lead story image the canvas that carries the splash line. It’s subtle, but very effective in establishing the primacy and cut-through of the lead story. There are fewer stories overall, only five against the market’s usual six, but they have more room, and are well detailed, so there’s no loss of value.

The ‘new’ messaging is worth noting also. As well as the monster blob top left, the new franchises are continually labelled as such, allowing art editor Rob Plowright-Taylor to let the whole package literally crackle with a sense of excitement.

InStyle is the IPC Southbank cover of the month, with its elegant and understated Rosamund Pike cover. InStyle was also the overall winner last month, and I have been remiss in not posting on it back then.

InStyle UK is one of many international editions of American InStyle, and as such faces real tensions when it comes to deciding how far it can deviate from the original brand proposition. In the US, InStyle is a massive brand, due in no small part to the fact that their biggest domestic celebrities are massive Hollywood A-listers, as opposed to the UK’s motley crew of soapstars, reality TV judges and glamour girls.

Editor Eilidh MacAskill’s big success has been to take the US formula and dramatically reinvent it for a very demanding British audience. She’s made the magazine cool, whilst retaining a high level of fashion service, celebrity style and beauty know-how.

This cover follows the same pattern as last month’s excellent 10th birthday issue. An immaculate colour palette, a cover star with genuine fashion authority, and the confidence of new art director Adele Chidwick in using white space to convey a sense of quality and true value.

Rugby World is the IPC Inspire cover of the month with this genuinely startling presentation of Johnny Wilkinson. I love this cover for the fact that it really looks modern! The lines are in a well chosen font, macho, but contemporary. The picture, well, Johnny appears to be wearing some sort of medieval snood. Bang on trend, I’m sure.

But the killer play is the great confidence around the use of colour, blue in this instance. Art editor Kevin Eason has moved away from the downward drag of an always red logo and fully engaged with the idea that every cover must look both timeless and timely in equal measure. Really good work.

Follow Andy Cowles on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!andycowles1

THIS Motor Boat & Yachting cover is excellent, but intriguingly similar to their November 2010 cover of the month. Well, it worked once, it’ll probably work twice! Here’s what I wrote back in 2010:

“There is a certain convention to motor boat magazine covers. I remember years back, looking at a title called Sportsboat, which had, as convention decrees, the sharp prow of the boat looming out toward me. And perched right on the tip of it, was a very pretty blond girl.

If I have a complaint, it’s the drop-in of the other two boats in the bottom corner. I am sure there are good commercial and newsstand reasons why this had to be done, but it does take the legs away from the splash. If I know the names of these boats, I’ll pick it up. If it’s really about Aft Cabins as a genre, then I’d want to see those words bigger than the 12pt within the pink bar. But if it’s still all about the fantasy of what kind of man I truly imagine myself to be, then looking at these two ugly caravans on a keel just doesn’t do it!”

To be honest, much of those observations still apply. Art Direction, colourway, and typography are all just as good, and just about the same. But there are two significant improvements worth noting. Firstly, the panel holding additional boat pics looks really well integrated here. It demonstrates how you can add loads of visual value without denting the premium feel one jot.

Secondly, and I think this is a first for an IPC title, there is a pink button advising the reader to ‘get MBY on your iPad’. The genius of this is not that anyone will go to the link and download the app, but that it is a staggeringly clear message that the readers of MBY all have iPads. If you’re a brand loyalist you’ll be flattered, if you have an iPad, you’ll see yourself reflected in the cover, and if you’re an advertiser you’ll see that MBY is genuinely right out in front.

I’M delighted to see TV Times up on the IPC café wall. It’s a brilliant title, with a high level of cover craft. Well loved people, well shot are the key to their success. This is no exception, it’s fun, it’s friendly and it’s only in TV Times.

LOOK makes the wall for the second month running with the confident assertion that Ange really is furious with Brad this time. Of course she is. But I would encourage the reader to go past the headline and look instead at the fantastic way the colours are managed.

The logo is beautifully rendered with many shades of pink, the fashion splash is black, but the outline lets it pop, and the blue of the Tulisa drop-in makes it clear that this is another story without denting the weekly fashion magazine aesthetic. Nice work all round.