~ Posted by Robert Butler, December 8th 2011

The January/February issue of Intelligent Life is on newsstands today, with a very different cover star from the last two: Thomas Heatherwick, the designer of benches and buses who may also be the future of architecture.

The first issue of 2012 also brings a reshuffle in the editorial team, and two of the changes involve the website. The online editor for the past three years, Emily Bobrow, becomes a contributing editor of Intelligent Life magazine, while continuing to edit the culture channel of The Economist online. Since Emily took over, More Intelligent Life has grown dramatically in its reach and stature, a fact reflected in the number of page views, which have more than doubled in the past year. "Emily has done a fine job," said Tim de Lisle, editor of Intelligent Life. "In fact two of them. She has fully earned the chance to have only one job, rather than having to run two websites dancing to the very different rhythms of a weekly and a bi-monthly. And we look forward to having her input on the magazine."

The other change is that The Blog gets a different name today, The Editors' Blog. It struck us that the editorial team, through their contact with our wide circle of contributors, come across many more insights and observations than we can fit into a 150-page bi-monthly.

One of my tasks, as the new online editor, will be to pass some of these on. There will be more blog posts, and they will be shorter. The magazine tries to serve slow food, and you will continue to find a choice of main courses on the home page—but this will be the place to come for tapas.