Cosmo enlarged

MEDIA

The Indian edition of Cosmopolitan uses size as a means to grab attention.

Size does matter, after all. So thinks Cosmopolitan, the youth lifestyle magazine, which has chosen to ring in its tenth anniversary in India with quite a bang.

So you have a ravishing Sushmita Sen in all her bronze glory splashed across the cover of an outsized "" literally "" issue of Cosmopolitan.

The decision to "go big", evidently, is being marked with much fanfare. "It's a moment of celebration, as it's a special landmark year for all of us," enthuses Mala Sekhri, publishing director, "So we thought of creating a double impact for readers as well as advertisers."

Double impact? At the rate at which the magazine has been disappearing from news-stands, Sekhri has reason to be doubly pleased. "All the pages look brilliant," feels Sekhri.

Advertisers, no doubt, are more than just a little pleased to get so much extra space for lifesize face shots and the like, known to work especially well for beauty and eyecare products.

The visual impact aside, the large and bulky magazine is nevertheless quite unwieldy for a reader to browse through without the support of a table.

While Sekhri agrees that the issue could be a trifle cumbersome for some, she claims it was an experiment worth doing. "After all, even magazines like She, W or the UK Cosmopolitan are all bigger in size," she points out.

So, is the magazine's newfound size devotion here to stay?

The publisher is unwilling to spill the beans. "All I can say for now is that February's will not be a tall issue. I can't reveal anything about the other issues," she responds. But she does reveal this: the reader is in for plenty of other surprises.