A fresh new look

Still celebrating the energy of your community

IN THE 25 YEARS that I’ve edited Kentucky Living, the one thing I continue to hear repeatedly from you, our readers, is: “I love that magazine.” Thank you for welcoming us into your homes for nearly 75 years. We are passionate about what we do.

This month I’m hijacking our CEO’s Co-op Community column so I can tell you about some exciting updates we’ve made to Kentucky Living.

Our goal continues to be the same— to bring you content you love that you can’t get anywhere else; and to bring you helpful energy information from your local electric co-op, the folks who provide this magazine as part of your consumer-member benefits.

First, I want to give a huge thanks to our three graphic designers: Katy Hurt, who led the redesign project, Kacey Harmeling and Jess Hawkins. Our team began updating the magazine before the pandemic hit, so the long hours and online meetings were while working from home. The designers did the heavy lifting, making sure the result was familiar but fresh.

Starting on the cover, you may notice an update to the design of the name across the top. Inside, you will see we’ve brightened everything with lots of white backgrounds, new typefaces and fresh colors. It had been more than 12 years since our last major refresh, so it was time to modernize the look.

During the last couple of years, we’ve added popular columns like Business Spotlight, Uniquely Kentucky and Kentucky Eats.

We say goodbye to Chef’s Choice’s Sarah Fritschner and Great Outdoors’ Dave Shuffett. When they told us last year they were ready to “retire,” we decided March would be the best time to welcome two new columnists.

Food blogger Heather Bilyeu now writes our cooking column, Around the Table. Raised in Kentucky, she calls herself a Southern girl who loves comfort food, sweet tea, entertaining and sharing memories over food with family and friends.

We look forward to sharing the new reader recipes as part of that column. We’ve already heard from many of you, but please keep sending us your original recipes at KentuckyLiving.com/submit-a-recipe. We’ll send you $25 if we use your recipe in print.

Our new Great Outdoors columnist, Ken McBroom, is a co-op member of West Kentucky RECC and an avid outdoorsman with his own web platform who promotes a lifestyle that revolves around hunting, fishing, camping and cooking.

We added a second page to that column, so if you have any outdoors events, please submit them to our Events Calendar at KentuckyLiving.com/events.

Lastly, you may notice that the magazine dimensions are slightly smaller. Part of the reason we updated the magazine was to take advantage of cost savings by using 5% less paper, which also saves a little on postage.

Let us know what you think. Drop us a note at KentuckyLiving.com (About/Contact) or on Facebook @Kentucky Living Magazine.

Also, we hope you enjoy our annual Lawn & Garden issue as we count down to warm days.