Round ONE. Client said magazines were better than RSS...I agree, to a point. Magazines use great typography and carefully considered white space to create focus and balance. The design, though an RSS feed, must not resemble an aggregated Tetris grid!

Round THREE. If you had a lot of content and only some, how could you make it feel lively and exciting? How could you create a reading experience that didn't drag on? How about a timer, that calculated how long it took you to read an article and then would recommend other articles of a similar length? Maybe.

Round FOUR. Something clean, less magazine-like with a tidier, more uniformed grid.

Round FIVE. How about mixing a coffee table metaphor with an innovative way of displaying text and imagery, so its not just a series of boring boxes?
 

Round FIVE and a bit. How about patterns and fancy headers? Remember, all this data is coming from a regular RSS feed.
 

Round SIX. Creative Director said, give the Developers something that'll scare them! So how about some whacky shapes over imagery and retro styled covers, not so scary, unless you fear the past!

Round SEVEN. Same types of content, in different containers / offset with a high-contrast colour palette / using a slightly offset grid. This was the final and preferred design route.