Friday afternoon in the Prospect office, all is quiet. We put the next edition of the magazine to bed earlier this week. But its an extra exciting month: we are giving the magazine a bit of a new look, with more pages, new columns, more essays, and a new style.

The edition itself is great—we think so at least—with essays on the new experimental philosophy (or “x-phi”) movement, the previously unknown story of the British Colonel who rescued Basra, and a brilliant piece of writing by Julian Evans about driving fast cars in the Ukraine. I’ll post details on our Facebook group next week, so do join that if you use Facebook. We’ve also got a new science and technology section, with pieces from steven johnson on software for book writing, and Jaron Lanier reporting from the TED conference. More on this in due course.

But i thought you might like to see a bit of the new design itself. The links here — which also link to the Facebook page— are two examples of the new spreads, one a profile (of Michael Ignatieff), the other the story about Basra. We also have a new slogan — “good writing about the things that matter.” The magazine is in shops next thursday, let us know what you think.