Let's dive in to some specific comments and suggestions now, starting at the front of the magazine and moving forward.
Cover: I feel strongly about this one... When I first started reading PLAYBOY, Arthur Paul was the Art Director, with Tom Staebler working under him as Executive Art Director, and cover after cover was both designed and photographed by Staebler. There were many beautifully designed, creatively conceived covers back then, and frankly I would have bought the magazine on the basis of the cover alone. Today, Arthur Paul has long since retired, but Staebler is still on board, now as Art Director. I have to ask, what on earth happened to reign in Staebler's previously evident talent? It's as if his hands are tied, because consistently for years 10 out of every 12 covers are dully and frustratingly formulaic, as if they were designed by a marketing committee. I do understand that good design doesn't sell a cover anymore; I have learned that the two most significant factors affecting newsstand sales are who is on the cover (a celebrity), and the copy type describing the issue contents. I can live with this fact of life, but I refuse to believe that well designed covers are completely incompatible with newsstand sales. I see several magazines out there that have beautiful covers, much better designed than PLAYBOY's (for example, Vogue and Vanity Fair consistently have elegantly designed celebrity covers with attractive type); PLAYBOY should be in their company. I would charge the Art Department with the responsibility of improving cover design to be consistent with the overall elegant, sophisticated feel of the magazine. When they have celebrities on the cover, they must try to get them to pose specifically for PLAYBOY photographers, and specifically for the cover, even if the celebrity wants their own photographer for the pictorial and won't otherwise pose. The cover should be specially shot, not selected from a pile of pictures they were handed and forced to work with (this is evidently what happened with Darryl Hannah and Shannen Doherty for November and December, which to me represent some of the worst covers in PLAYBOY's entire history). Then coordinate the contents type with the design, instead of formulaicly laying it down both sides. I think that people just want to read the contents of the issue and don't care whether it's down the sides, at the bottom, or whatever; just so it's easy to read. There are also alternatives to consider: why not test the market with multiple covers? Why not put the cover text on a removable overlay, and leave the cover itself without any type on it?
Surely there are some artists/designers out there who can put together thoughtfully designed covers on a regular basis that will not result in the issues' sales going down the tubes. Maybe PLAYBOY could even start winning awards for cover design again.
Playbill: This section was becoming almost a joke to me in the past couple of years: the textual transitions were sudden and jarring, and the paragraphs used to read like a bunch of press release hype strung together, with little thought given to coherence. The recent format change is a huge improvement over the previous stale look and awkward text transitions. However, it is too short; for instance there is no mention whatever of the pictorial features, and while the isolated segments now there do solve the previous problem of awkward transitions by simply eliminating them, there is no way to show any sense of coherence. Perhaps integrating a Letter from the Editor or similar component could help with this. It would be cool to hear from Hef here, or to use it as a platform to introduce Editorial Director Jim Kaminsky's specific thoughts and so give him a more public face in the magazine. I am also a bit perplexed about photo choice -- often the subject of the features is shown rather than the contributor; why not use smaller photos, and feature both subject and contributor photos? Readers (at least those who care to read this feature and don't simply bypass it) look to this page to see what the contributors look like; they usually already know what the feature subjects look like. This would also be a good place for some behind the scenes photos.