A month later, media buyers say that Blueprint is not the Martha Stewart Living Jr. they were expecting--home décor and home cooking, with a younger skew--but it's a magazine they think will do well and, like MSL before it, potentially create a new genre within women's titles.

Like Martha Stewart Living, Blueprint offers authoritative do-it-yourself advice, but that advice extends beyond decorating the living room, baking brownies and arranging flowers for a dinner party. It goes on to advise the younger readers it targets, 25-to 45-year-olds, on such matters as how to make your own sundress, how to turn a scarf into a handbag, and how to carry oneself in public ("Behave Yourself: A Dozen Dos and Please-Don'ts").

The emphasis is less domestic, more lifestyle.

"It will reach out to young women who are not comfortable with the traditional service magazines and find Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple and others a little too family- and home-oriented," says magazine consultant Martin Walker of Walker Communications.

"Aesthetically, it's very appealing," says Melissa Pordy, director of media investment solutions at Cheil Communications in North Jersey. "In Martha's style, she really has broken through the competitive clutter and delivers a substantial difference. She has a very viable product, one that will serve the marketplace with something that it is not currently exposed to."

And while Blueprint doesn't have Stewart's face all over it, she's no less present. Says Alan Jurmain, media director at New York's Avrett Free & Ginsberg: "Clearly, no one is buying the magazine because it's Martha-focused, but the fact that it's Martha-influenced can be a good thing."

The value of Blueprint is that if it succeeds it will harvest readers who can then move on to Martha Stewart Living as they grow older and their interests turn more domestic.

The challenge Blueprint faces is winning those younger readers, competing against a slew of existing titles but also the internet and television and other media distractions. The art of Blueprint will be in merging the best of existing titles, from MSL to Real Simple, Lucky and Ready Made to the fashion titles, while giving it its own identity.

Blueprint's editors make it clear just who this magazine is for. The first issue's fashion and product spreads—on shoes, stationery, sofas and sundries—range from affordable to extravagant. The beauty features make an effort to find the middle ground between LipSmackers and La Mer. And home projects, like creating poster-size photo enlargements, using camping gear to decorate indoors, and putting up out-there address numbers, draw on a playful aesthetic.

In its design, Blueprint is younger and more whimsical than MSL, with punchy typography and big graphic elements that play on the Blueprint theme. Yet it's still crisper and cleaner than the typical girl magazine.

Development editor Tom Prince says the idea is to draw readers with a wide range of editorial features beyond the domestic. Thus the tagline, Design Your Life.

"It's definitely a lifestyle magazine, and about 30 percent of the content is home-based. That's a section that has broad appeal to everyone, and we will cover it heavily. But we also want to cover beauty, health, fitness and fashion, as well as culture, travel and other things that women want. A lot of women are saying that they want one-stop shopping in a magazine."

So far, Blueprint staffers say readers and advertisers are responding. In the month since its launch, they say more than 100,000 subscription orders have come in, nearly half the magazine's initial ratebase. After a second test issue in August, the magazine will move to bimonthly publication next year.

The range of advertisers—including home goods, skin care, cosmetics, automotive, fashion and liquor—reflects Blueprint's wider editorial coverage, says Sally Preston, the magazine's publisher, as well as publisher of MSL.

"Because we have different categories than we've had in Living, including beauty and fashion, and we're reaching a different demographic, we went after beauty and fashion advertisers pretty hard. We also reached some of the same advertisers as in Living, but with different products," she says.

The first issue was a rush effort, as Preston admits. To reach media planners and buyers, there was a week-long blast of emails tagged "Define Your Style," and Bluetini and Hotdog parties were held in key markets, with dishes from articles in the issue.

"In the six to eight weeks we had to close the issue, you just can't get to everyone. So we've tried to do some viral marketing. We tried to make it as viral as possible and move the information as fast as possible."