I made the mistake and let myself get carried away by recommendation of Veerle, a decent designer I would say, and subscribed to the Layers Magazine e-version for some 30$ a year. First of all, I did not receive any order confirmation, which is really unprofessional when you give someone your credit card number and allow them to charge it for 30$ – then I mailed them asking if they had received my subscription for the international e-version Layers Magazine. An employee replied that they were sorry but did not receive anything. Four days later I did receive a confirmation (a bit pathetic I find) – now today I got the first copy of Layers Magazine and I must say I am shocked.

First of all, the email said that the Magazine was being published six times over the year. That is one magazine every two months?
Most of the articles are contributions by well-accredited designers such as Veerle from Belgium, who has been in the business since 1992 – then they drop in some reviews and miscellaneous tips and tricks that you can get from any cheap tutorial site or tech-review page.

Where is the added value?!
Half of the magazine (it has some 110 pages) is advertisements, so you pay 30$ a year for a magazine that is published every two months that is filled with ads, ads, ads. (UPDATE: I counted: 51 full pages of ads!) I must say those ads are really targeted and interesting to the audience, but still that is way too much for my taste. I will not pro-long my subscription and find it stumbling that people like Veerle recommend the magazine so highly (e.g. under every post). Of course, her tutorials (which are great!) are published there, but still the Layers Magazine SUCKS as for the reasons given above.

I cannot recommend Layers Magazine

P.S. The Zinio delivery manager is very annoying and looks like spyware, I don’t trust it. However I can imagine that Layers Magazine does not want to send around PDF files directly (else people would upload them to their blogs and sites bluntly).

If you want to waste some money you might be interested in subscribing to one of the worst paid e-zines I have read and visit Layers Magazine here at www.layersmagazine.com

I can recommend the Before and After Magazine, which is short, concise and to the point. Nine to Fifteen pages, no advertisements, sources included and cheap (costs 24$ which is like 16Euro for 32 articles that really help you out)

BA Magazine offers even free samples of articles for PDF download: free of charge, high quality! Link 1 | Link 2 – and no I do not work for them or am related or anything, I am just stating my honest opinion and review here)