Rollacoaster is a brand spanking new title from the publishers responsible for Wonderland and Man About Town. Under the editorial guidance of Becky Davies, Rollacoaster has a more fun, lighthearted and immediately British identity compared with its older relatives.
It shares the same international outlook and luxe feel as Wonderland, but, quite rightly, Rollacoaster is doing different things and is aimed at a different readership. That is, if the premiere issue is anything to judge by, a wider audience of teenagers and twenty-somethings who need to balance their appetite for luxury and must-have expensive goodies with more attainable items for a more realistic pocket.
Rollacoaster is strongly grounded in UK culture found in fashion, music and lifestyle spread across pages with a simple, stark and effective art direction that is sometimes reminiscent of UK magazines of the 80’s and early 90’s. There is a welcome sense of traditional English –and traditionally cynical- journalistic writing in Rollacoaster - hurrah for the return of the columnist! Clever without labouring the point; breezy without being brain-dead, Rollacoaster is an interesting arrival on the UK publishing scene. Lessons learned in not patronising one’s audience, from the once sacrosanct institution of the English music magazine, have been reinvented and applied for a generation for whom looking cool also means looking good. Once hanging around a student union bar with greasy hair, a pint of snakebite and big opinions was enough for British youth. Smartly, the Rollacoaster team is speaking to a generation with updated expectations.