Zona de Obras is a working team specialized in developing musical and cultural activities. It has an extensive team of collaborators in the main cities of Ibero-America and Europe. It is one of the most prestigious graphic design firms in Spain in subjects related to music and Latin American culture.

Colophon is delighted to welcome Zona de Obras as a media partner of the event in 2009!

More info about Zona de Obras, click here

DROME magazine is a prestigious, alternative and cosmopolitan Italian quarterly that deals with the contemporary world of art and culture, taking on a different theme in every issue.

More about Drome here

More info about Apartamento

Co-Founder Sahil Merchant was delighted to accept the award. “It is very encouraging to receive recognition for ignoring common wisdom and breaking all the accepted rules within an industry” he said. Unlike the newsagent channel, which Merchant goes out of his way to distance himself from, Mag Nation is constantly increasing its magazine range and also actively encourages customers to browse. In fact, the Mag Nation stores have signs saying “everything at Mag Nation can be touched, felt and browsed… except for our staff”.

Mag Nation has developed a cult following in Melbourne. Known for its range of over 4,000 mainstream as well as traditionally ‘hard to find’ niche magazines, its flagship store in Elizabeth St expanded to a new store in Greville St, Prahran early in 2008.

In the last two years, approximately 2 million people have walked through Mag Nation’s doors. “These customers have other choices, and we are therefore humbled that they continue to choose a small business like us over larger brand alternatives” says Merchant.

Asked why he thought Mag Nation was able to take out the Best Young Business Award over other nominees from many different industries, Merchant pointed to a willingness to experiment as driving their innovation. “Take our website as a case in point” he said, “Online magazine subscriptions are considered to be the enemy by most magazine retailers. Yet we have built a massive website offering both local and international magazine subscriptions, and have done so in a way that for the first time ever, allows customers to have an enjoyable experience as well as a pragmatic transaction. No other physical retailer has attempted to cannibalise themselves in this way”.

The Mag Nation website (www.magnation.com) features a city made of magazines that users can navigate through, as well as a tongue in cheek ‘magdentifier’ that takes users through an increasingly silly set of questions to recommend magazines based on their personality profile. Merchant feels that the website played a large part in their award win last night.

The title of Best New Business in Melbourne fits Mag Nation well. It seems that everyone other than the magazine industry grey hairs agree.

More info: www.magnation.com

Hotels are now online and best rates offered to all Colophon 2009 Flash Passers! Have a look to our Travel tips page and book your room now. Suites, single rooms, doubles and twins are available in different types of hotels. Fill a registrar forms or book by email/phone. All you have to say is “I am coming to Colophon 2009″!

Don’t get lost, find also a multitude of tips about how to come in Luxembourg, where is Luxembourg on the map (?!), addresses of the main locations, opening hours, phone numbers of taxis etc.

Help yourself and take our new Colophon’s 2009 banner for your blog at:

buzzparadise

Thanks to Vanksen for that!

More info about Vanksen

More info about Distill.

Website: www.distilldigital.com

It was total psychic horror: death, decay, dissolution, cold empty black malevolent lonely voided space. It was the worst thing I have ever confronted . . . I understood on an intuitive level why people kill themselves. If I had to go for any length of time with that feeling, I’d surely kill myself.” (‘Infinite Jest’, 1996).

Brrrrrr! this is what’s waiting for you in Lodown 63!

More info at www.lodownmagazine.com

Luis Mendo shows the new issue of POP is in a split run of no less than 6 different covers. With beautiful typography. See them in all glory here on Luis Mendo’s blog: http://bladblog.nl/

do you read me?! opening on the 30th of September – finally good Magazines have found their place in Berlin.

At do you read me?! you will find a curated assortment of contemporary Magazines and Reading. The shelves – specifically designed for the shop by Greige/Buero fuer Design – are constantly in flux, being filled with the latest issues from “A Prior” to “Interview” to “Zoo Magazine”.

Providing consultation, research and creating individual assortments for clients do you read me?! stands out as the specialised shop for magazines. Amongst famous galleries and better cuisine - the shop in Auguststrasse 28 offers a comprehensive range of art, culture, fashion, photography, design, architecture, literature, music, theater, society, politics and business titles.

Alongside relevant magazines to stay up-to-date with, like “Brand Eins”, “Du,” “Lettre”, “Monopol”, and “Vogue,” you will find unique Magazines like “Achtung”, “Another Magazine”, “Baseline”, “Foam” and “Nico”.

do you read me?! is no Newsstand – the classic glossies are only available by order! Make a shopping list, get the latest magazine news, or get your very own magazine box containing your orders and recommendations – for everybody that appreciates beautiful, intelligently written and well made magazines, do you read me?! in Auguststrasse 28, Berlin-Mitte, is the perfect place.
Do read more magazines!

do you read me?! GbR
Magazine und Lektüre der Gegenwart
Mark Kiessling, Jessica Reitz
Auguststraße 28
10117 Berlin-Mitte

Tel. +49-30-695 49 695
Fax +49-30-695 49 696

info@doyoureadme.de
www.doyoureadme.de

Newsletter: news@doyoureadme.de

Short Biographies:

Mark Kiessling
Having studied design at the Cologne Model (KISD) and founded Greige/Büro für Design eight years ago in Berlin. He is working as a successful Art Director and Designer for well-known fashion and cultural clients.
Together with his partner Rupert Kopp, he designed the Interior of do you read me?!, with the support of Uwe Andrés, designsfiction.

Jessica Reitz
Is a professional bookseller and bachelor of communications working for Dussmann das Kulturkaufhaus for several years as head of marketing.

Statement:
“We provide a subjective selection of beautiful, sapiently written, well crafted magazines in the scope of art, culture, fashion, photography, design, architecture, literature, music, theatre, society, politics and business. We look forward to compiling, together with our clients, the most beautiful, most interesting and most innovative magazines available from around the globe.”

A lot of designers regard the practice of infographics as dull and boring — but this is almost certainly because they’ve never tried it. The 10 we spoke to, and whose work we’ve used to illustrate this feature, love what they do and believe it offers as big a challenge and as great a satisfaction as any other kind of design.

IdN have also published the new book “Pens are my Friends” dedicated to Jon Burgerman’s works.

For the first time ever Jon Burgerman’s commercial, personal and collaborative works are collected together in one lavish publication. Included amongst the many projects are toys, clothing, exhibitions, murals, customizations, sketchbooks and a sick bag.

Accompanying the hundreds of pages of brain melting doodles, drawings, characters and colours are essays by the Pictoplasma team and editor of Modart Magazine, insights into Jon’s working process and, of course, photos of salads.

More info at : www.idnworld.com

Produced and published by Pump Diseño, Acido Surtido number 18 is in the streets. Alert! is the new topic with a cover by the Canadian designer Marian Bantjes and works by Wen Tomada, Paula Mizraji, Nicolás Pisano, Paula Mariasch, Diego Levy, Nerdiseña, Sol Santarsiero, Hermenegildo Sábat, Leo Arias, Guido Bartolotta Tobío, Lucas López, Ariel Di Lisio, Federico Díaz Mastellone and a poster by the designer Octavio Martino’s team.

Photo by Julián Vázquez

Founder of Test Pilot Collective, a type and design studio, he also worked at a number of design studios-DNA Studio, American Eagle Outfitters, IDEO, Bigwords.com, Design Guys, and Duffy.

Rares and less rares books have been collected over the past 12 years. They range from graphic design, architecture, art, typography, illustration, skateboarding, graffiti, etc.

His collection included also an amazing selection of magazine’s premiere issues. A pleasure for the eyes..

More info: www.joekral.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joekral/

Contact Joe: info@joekral.org

Fall issue is available now, including “wonderful goodies from amazing profiles”, fall fashion regarding the cooling weather, coverages about Creativity Now Conferences held past Summer in New York and Stockholm and contents of selected panel discussions if you missed it. Rita Ackermann is on cover recovered by colors. Indefinable, almost. Featuring Louise Bourgeois retrospective at the Guggeheim, French Conceptual artist Sophie Calle in an exclusive interview with artist Jill Magid. Special menswear preview and a very hot promise which will vaporize this issue lava. Let’s see…

Tokion’s website: www.tokion.com

Cabinet magazine has open a new place for exhibitions and events in Brooklyn! The programme will starts in mid-October and will include exhibitions, screenings, talks, dinners, symposia, performances, workshops, boating expeditions, and more. The door is located at the 300 Nevins St, Brooklyn, but keep it secret!

More information at www.cabinetmagazine.org

Photo: Grant Willing

This is a magazine - Episode 25: Activities in time and space

Intra-dimensional episode with: aids-3d, Center for Tactical Magic, Damon Zucconi, Francesco Spampinato, Grant Willing, Harm van den Dorpel, Loshadka, Nikola Tosic, Oliver Laric, Shane Hope , Yoshi Sodeoka.

With site-specific performative installations - Happening 20 September 2008 8pm

8.00pm Francesco Spampinato x Sbudellatron “Unbounded”
8.30pm My Cat is an Alien “Beyond yr shadow - I am / I am not (here?)”

Careof DOCVA
Fabbrica del Vapore
via Procaccini 4, 20154 Milano
+39 02 3315800
careof@careof.org
www.careof.org
www.docva.org

The episode continues from 19 September - 11 October 2008, Tuesday to Saturday 3.00 - 7.00pm

http://www.thisisamagazine.com
http://www.thisisnotamagazine.com

DEVORA RAN® presents it’s second issue debating and discussing porn, eroticism and art.

DEVORA RAN® is a magazine about the sex culture, founded by two women who are sick of a traditional and repetitive vision of pornography. DEVORA RAN® is the unedited showroom of the sexual revolution that society is experiencing; a real alternative to the current sex industry’s conventionalism.

DEVORA RAN® is directed at women and men, which makes it the first sex magazine aimed at a mixed audience. The strength of DEVORA RAN® lies in the fact it is the alternative everyone has been waiting for. It makes its debut in the market, without any competition, ready to satisfy consumers who are culture loving and unrepressed in their sexuality.

DEVORA RAN® is not a porn magazine. It includes much more than penetration, fellatio and big cocks. It doesn’t only depict posing models, but explores real people’s sexual attitudes and culture.

DEVORA RAN® is a showcase for its collaborators’ work: portraying sex through photography, cinema, music, literature, philosophy, painting, illustration, design, etc.
DEVORA RAN® fuses pornography and art, organizing events and publishing the work of the best artists.

DEVORA RAN® is edited in Spanish and English and publishes every two months the most recent contents online. Eventually, luxury editions will be printed.

More info: www.devoraran.com

Hot Desk / Paris
Saturday 20/09/08 from 12h to 22h

For Paris event, Point Ephémère host the first step of the project with the release of the special Manifesta issue of the magazine J’aime beaucoup ce que vous faites and a one day show Last chance to see the Show. This new issue takes the notion of “Broken English” as starting point for exploring language experiments. In response to Raqs Media Collective’s proposal, the magazine focus on the transfer of their notion of value of residue into language and tries to figure out the creative potential of failure, errors in translation and miscommunication. Last chance to see the Show is  conceived as a fiction for a forthcoming exhibition that never happen. Discussing the process of a show, the hidden part of an exhibition is revealed to the audience, turning traditional formats such as artist talk, interviews, press conferences, set up into something unexpected.

Hot Desking- Paris/Istanbul/Rome/Stockholm - Manifesta 7 special project
Hot Desking is a collaboration between Manifesta 7 and Curatorlab/Konstfack* as part of the exhibition The Rest of Now curated by Raqs Media Collective in Bolzano, 2008,  which takes The Rest of Now as a point of departure for further discussions and explorations. The project consists of four broadsheets and four discursive events in four cities - Rome, Stockholm, Paris and Istanbul - which function as independent but related satellites of The Rest of Now. The broadsheets and events link ideas, themes and discussions initiated by the exhibition in Bolzano to the local context of the four cites.

mono.kultur is a central platform for a potentially larger network of activities within different areas of culture, with the mono in the name not only standing for the mono-themed approach within the magazine, but also as a reminder to adhere to a certain attitude and philosophy within everything that mono.kultur do.

First proper external collaboration on a new fashion label under the moniker of mono.gramm will be showed this week during London Fashion Week at the temporary showroom in the East End.

Private View on 16.09.2008 from 18h – 22h or at any other time during the opening times specified below.

Showroom 14.09.2008 – 26.09.2008, 12h – 19h.
yfbs, 207 Whitecross Street, London EC1Y 8QP, UK, www.yfbs.co.uk

We are delighted to welcome White Fungus as a new media partner of Colophon!

White Fungus is an experimental arts magazine based in Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand. Produced by a collective of artists, writers and designers, White Fungus is an ongoing experiment in community media art.

As the spores have been released, its creators look forward to seeing which way the wind blows. The only thing more uncertain than its future is its past.

Read our interview.

]]> http://blog.colophon2009.com/a-strange-chinese-mushroom/feed/ http://blog.colophon2009.com/are-revolutions-the-solutions/ http://blog.colophon2009.com/are-revolutions-the-solutions/#comments Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:52:33 +0000 ddamiani http://blog.colophon2009.com/?p=408

Magazine Palais/ Issue 7 - Fall 2008

New issue entirely devides with Jeremy Deller: a conversation with the artist around the exhibition, an exclusive interview of the glam rock wrestler Adrian Street, an article about eletronic music in the 1920s in USSR, numerous portfolios, and also a complete guide selection. For futher informations: http://www.palaismagazine.com

In the frame of the exhibition From a revolution to another.
Carte Blanche to Jeremy Deller. with Ed Hall, Alan Kane, Scott King, Matt Price, William Scott, Andrei Smirnov, Marc Touché, White Columns.

Carte blanche
Every year the Palais de Tokyo gives an artist carte blanche. This carte blanche is a powerful concept that structures the Palais de Tokyo’s programming. The artist, placed at the center of the decision-making process, is free to devise and stage more than an exhibition, a real program. This carte blanche to an artist, revealing a kind of map of the artist’s brain, desires and influences all at the same time, is an opportunity to tackle the processes of creation and esthetic cross-fertilization from a novel angle. Artists are never where we expect them to be. The way they look not only at our reality and our everyday life, but also at the works of their contemporaries is unique and illuminating.

Jeremy Deller
After Ugo Rondinone in 2007, this year Jeremy Deller is being offered carte blanche to come up with an exhibition. Born in 1966 in London where he lives and works, Jeremy Deller was awarded the prestigious Turner Prize in 2004. His multi-form body of work brings several artistic disciplines into play, combining a passion for music, social phenomena and popular traditions. Jeremy Deller succeeds in bringing these separate realities into dialogue with one another by creating unexpected meeting grounds. Thus for the project Acid Brass (1997) he got a traditional brass band from a Manchester factory to play pieces of acid house music.

From one revolution to another
Taking as his starting point the “Folk Archive” collection which assembles British folklore items and documents, such as customized motorbike helmets, collections of tattoos, or banners from demonstrations, D’UNE RÉVOLUTION À L’AUTRE (From one revolution to another) follows a path that takes us from the British Industrial Revolution to the contemporary digital revolution. Thus we witness in turn the history of electronic music in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the birth of rock-’n'-roll in France based on the Golf Drouot in the 1960s, and life in industrial Northern Britain in the 1970s. The exhibition, devised in collaboration with 9 other guests – Peter Clare, Ed Hall, Alan Kane, Scott King, Matthew Price, William Scott , Andrei Smirnov, Marc Touché, White Columns – invited by Jeremy Deller, presents archives, previously unpublished photographs, films and audiotapes in which Eddy Mitchell, Léon Theremin, glam-rock singers and English wrestlers, the Happy Mond ays, a mechanical elephant, etc. are all muddled up together.

September 26- January 4 2009
Show opens
Thurday September 25th, 2008
From 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.: press visit
From 8 p.m. to midnight: public opening

The Latvia-based magazine Veto and Few from Spain have joined the media partners of Colophon this week, welcome to us!

“Veto Magazine” is a music & visual culture magazine from Latvia. It covers up information about new Latvian and foreign musicians, artists, designers. Also informs about latest topics in independent culture expressions - theater, cinema, literature. In magazine you can find wide photo galleries, concert, festival and music album reviews.

More info: http://www.vetomagazine.lv

FEW Magazine is a monthly publication, of international projection, that has set out to become a reference in Spain and a support for national and international talents. “We have put all of our energy and knowledge to create a magazine with its own identity in the market, because at FEW Magazine we are convinced that there is great talent behind it. We want to be the best media to transmit all that we are and are proud to be able to say that our creative team is one of the most competitive in Europe today.”

More info: http://www.fewmagazine.es

The Drome Revolution Tour 2008

Focussing on the many magnificent European cities, and on some across the Atlantic too, DROME celebrates its current glorious trilogy - liberté (DROME 12), égalité (DROME 13), fraternité (DROME 14) helping to constantly liven up and support exhibitions, celebrations, awards and parties, from September to December 2008.

The DROME revolution tour 2008
Bestiario: festival di sperimentazione artistica - rome, 23/26.09.08
 the inspired by drome night: 24.09.08
ex mattatoio di testaccio 
web: www.festivalbestiario.org 
 
tina b. 2008 the prague contemporary art festival - prague, 25.09/15.10.08 
various locations 
web: www.tina-b.eu

Vienna design week - vienna, 02/12.10.08 
various locations 
web: www.viennadesignweek.at
Pecha kucha night - trieste, 04.10.08 
mercato ortofrutticolo
web: www.pecha-kucha.org
Artverona 2008 - verona, 16/20.10.08 
exhibition grounds of verona
web: www.artverona.it
Zoo art fair 2008 - london, 17/20.10.08
royal academy of arts
web: www.zooartfair.com
Illustrative 2008 - zurich, 17/26.10.08 
drome magazine young illustrators award 2008 
zürich messehallen
web: www.illustrative.de
Show off 2008 - paris, 22/26.10.08 
espace pierre cardin 
web: www.showoffparis.com
Art forum berlin 13 - berlin, 31.10/03.11.08
messegelände berlin 
web: www.art-forum-berlin.de
Artissima 15 - turin, 07/09.11.08 
lingotto fiere 
web: www.artissima.it
Art basel miami beach 2008 - miami, 04/07.12.08 
miami beach convention center
web: www.artbaselmiamibeach.com

info: drome@dromemagazine.com web: www.dromemagazine.com

The new domus issue (September, #917) dedicated to the 11th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice is out now in your newspaper kiosk.

The theme for this issue is `Construct´ and features six portfolios from various photographers whose work questions the reality of photographs by constructing objects, situations and spaces, or by intervening in those that already exist, in order to translate them through the eye of the camera into a particular image. New York based photographer Amy Stein photographs physical encounters between man and the natural world by placing taxidermied animals in unnatural locations which are in fact re-enactments of real incidents reported in local newspapers and oral histories.

More info at: www.1000wordsmag.com

More information:
Exhibition L’art en Europe, Domaine Pommery à Reims, 5 place du Général Gouraud 51100 Reims, Tel : +33 03.26.61.62.63, www.pommery.com
Ends 31st December 2008. Catalogue published at the occasion, print: August 2008.

1. 032c: A small Berlin culture title that has caused a storm in design circles with its recent ‘ugly’ redesign. Its use of system fonts and garish colours stand out in a market full of stylised modernism. www.032c.com

2. Monocle: The global business magazine reinvented as a lifestyle title, using a bookish design system that communicates ‘this is different’, while at the same time being unusually understated. www.monocle.com

3. New York: Beautiful typography and info-graphics make this recently redesigned NYC weekly a modern classic, featuring the care and attention-to-detail usually found only in a monthly. www.nymag.com

4. Fantastic Man: Unashamedly gay in outlook, this men’s fashion magazine employs a monochrome lo-fi design that looks back past ‘GQ’, ‘FHM’ and ‘Loaded’ to a time when page designs invested their subjects with a quiet dignity. www.fantasticmanmagazine.com

5. The Guardian: A daily newspaper completely re-engineered to complement its digital presence, borrowing design techniques from websites and magazines to create an era-defining model. www.guardian.co.uk

Jeremy Leslie is group creative director at John Brown Group and co-curator of Colophon.

032c

Monocle

New York

Fantastic Man

The Guardian

We Love Magazines

Designer: Jeremy Leslie
Editor: Andrew Losowsky
Publisher: Mike Koedinger
Language: English

Release: March 2007
Price: € 35,00 / $ 55,00 / £ 25,99
Format: 16,8 x 23,7 cm
Features: 392 pages, full colour, softcover
ISBN: 978-3-89955-188-4

We Love Magazines explores magazines and magazine culture with groundbreaking visuals and editorial contributions from around the world. The book features in-depth analysis of various aspects of magazine creation while, as the title reflects, celebrating with genuine pleasure a medium that continues to entertain, inform and surprise. We Love Magazines also contains the most comprehensive directory ever compiled of 1,100 international pop culture magazines and the shops in which to buy them.

In addition, readers are introduced to ten pioneering, independent magazines that have created their own chapters for the book. These are: Carl*s Cars (Norway), Coupe (Canada), Frame (The Netherlands), Omagiu (Romania), Rojo (Spain), S-magazine (Denmark), Shift! (Germany), Streets/Fruits/Tune (Japan), thisisamagazine.com (Italy) and Yummy (France)

In keeping with the independent spirit of the magazines featured in the book, We Love Magazines has been published with ten slightly different covers. All have the same title graphic and background photo but feature ten different drawings in blue foil block by Mio Matsumoto. The drawings portray ten different readers, who each represent one of the ten contributing magazines listed above.

The book We Love Magazines was created as an accompaniment to the Colophon2007 magazine symposium, which takes place in Luxembourg on March 9-11, 2007.

Dive inside the book…

Feature articles

Berlin: 3 angles David Ulrichs (The Berlin gallery scene; The 5th Berlin Biennial; Artist profile: Aleana Egan) | Inner space: Science fiction and Irish art Chris Fite-Wassilak - a local ’science fiction of the present’? | They’re not going to change it, are they? The Museum of Natural History Dublin as material culture Sherra Murphy - a look at Dublin’s ‘dead zoo’ as material culture | The glue and the wedge: The cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins Isobel Harbison and Ilaria Gianni - investigating two forms of artist collaboration | Hou Hanru: Art, ev+a and the global bazaar Peter Murray - a look at a ’star’ curator and his impact on this year’s ev+a |

Reviews

Belfast Two places Niall de Buitléar | Brendan Jamison IN-BETWEEN: New work and JCB BUCKET series Slavka Sverakova | James Merrigan … could we talk before and after… (part 1) / Pascale Steven Erasure David Hughes | Carrick-on-Shannon Clea van der Grijn Moment(ous) Maurice O’Connell | Cork Seán Lynch: Joseph Beuys (still a discussion) John Kelly | An incomplete survey of artist-run spaces in Cork Fergal Gaynor | Dublin Colin Darke: The Capital paintings Tim Stott | Lightwave Paul O’Brien | Defining space Eimear McKeith | Phoenix Park / Séamus Nolan: Demesne Gemma Tipton | Glasgow Brian Connolly: History lesson Michelle Browne | Glasgow International Festival 2008 Susan Thomson | Limerick Two places Karen Norm oyle-Haugh | ev+a Jessica Foley | Montreal Re-enactments Judith Wilkinson | New York Katie Holten: Uprooted Tim Maul | Portadown Ronnie Hughes: Manifest Slavka Sverakova |

Now open: the Circa online shop, with books, catalogues and magazines relating to art in and from Ireland; see http://www.recirca.com/shop

Circa

by Rick Poynor, the contributing editor of PRINT.

For a medium that is regularly pronounced to be living on borrowed time, the magazine seems to be in a surprisingly perky state of health. If you took the industry’s temperature by scanning the racks in Borders, you might find it hard to credit that there is any problem at all. London branches of the store, like their American counterparts, are awash with titles catering to every conceivable interest and taste. In reality, though, while there are more titles on sale than ever, the total number of sales in the U.S.—366 million copies a year—has remained the same since 1990, so the trend for many publications is downward.

Nevertheless, as the title of a recent book put it, We Love Magazines—the “we” in this case being design people. The book accompanied the Colophon2007 symposium in Luxembourg, an event about independent magazines co-curated by Jeremy Leslie, a British magazine-design supremo at the custom publishing house John Brown. Leslie is also author of magCulture, a survey of contemporary magazines that later became a popular blog. In January, he was at it again, co-organizing a conference with the title “Magazines Are Dead: Long Live the Magazine!” (Maybe there is no revival; maybe it’s just Leslie’s tireless promotional activities that make it seem as if there must be one going on.)

I used to be an obsessive follower of what was happening in magazines, but it’s an expensive and space-consuming habit, and I eventually slowed down. I always took it for granted that the best magazines offered a combination of great writing and great visual appeal, with design as an expression of the content. Lately, the trend has been more and more toward magazines that you look at rather than read in any concerted way, and Leslie’s first magazine survey, Issues, actually began with the declaration, “I don’t read magazines.” Someone else wrote those words, but they set the tone for the whole book. For a writer, the sentiment is a complete turnoff. Apart from art and design titles, the magazines I tend to buy these days are publications devoted to commentary about books, music, film, and politics. While it’s important that they are designed for comfortable reading, they will never be featured in roundups of the latest trendy design.

So I decided to conduct a survey. My method was simple. I went to Borders and bought every youthful, creative, free-spirited, independent British magazine that caught my eye. Many of these titles occupy or extend the style-magazine territory defined by The Face (now defunct), i-D (founded in 1980 and still soldiering on), and later by Dazed & Confused and Sleazenation. Sleazenation is now also departed, and was the last title of this kind I read regularly because I liked its sharp, historical awareness of pop culture and its critical, questioning view of the corporate pressures on contemporary youth culture. In no particular order, here are the titles I took home: Flux, Blag, Fused Magazine, Product, Garageland, Wonderland, Wound, Sublime, Karen, Amelia’s Magazine, Let Them Eat Cake, Nude, Bad Idea, Meat Magazine, and Little White Lies. Most of these titles have arrived on the stands since 2000, and some are just a few issues old, although it turned out that Blag—founded by art student twins and financed these days entirely by sponsored advertorials—has been around in one form or another since 1992.

What I was hoping to find were magazines that convey a sense of necessity. They need to exist because they have something to say that no other publication expresses with the same urgency, excitement, inventiveness, completeness, or precision. They come from a deep sense of commitment, they are propelled by genuine passion, and they offer information and insights that simply aren’t available with the same vividness anywhere else. They express their moment because they participate in it, yet they also stand a little apart from it, showing self-awareness and a capacity for reflection that isn’t possible for absolute insiders. Above all, they define their own agenda.

Design is a significant factor, though it cannot be the sole criterion or even the first consideration. For a magazine to gel, it needs an editorial vision. That vision may come from a designer, if the designer is also the founder, publisher, editor, or an especially potent force in the magazine’s creation, and it may well involve visual ideas and visual expression, but there has to be subject matter—content—before there can be expression. If the content is compelling, the magazine can hold together and engage the reader—note reader—even if the design doesn’t break new ground.

Good examples of this are Nude, which offers “music, graphics, and hip lit”; Bad Idea, devoted to “modern storytelling”; and Little White Lies, a film magazine. All of these journal-like publications, with attractively small pages, have visual strengths—Little White Lies’ illustrated covers, each based on a film image, are particularly effective—but their reason for being is to explore cultural, literary, and cinematic subject matter that their editors and writers know and care about. Although Meat Magazine and Garageland, both five issues old (as is Bad Idea), have yet to show the same coherence, they put a notable emphasis on writing; it would be perverse to buy any of these titles merely to flip the pages. All of them get by, at least for now, with little, if any, advertising.

Fashion-led titles play by different rules, so here we have no choice but to flip. The 11th issue of Wonderland is clotted with ads from Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Gucci, and DKNY, followed by pages of tedious, narcissistic fashion shoots. The design has a kind of informal monumentality that quickly becomes repetitive. Yet whenever I was on the verge of tossing Wonderland aside, an intriguing article would pop up about shop-window dummies, the continuing relevance of cut-and-paste collage-making, or the found photo artworks of Canadian artist Steven Shearer.

The second issue of the bizarrely titled and even fatter Wound—the name comes from a line in a Robert Frost poem—shows greater signs of wanting to have it both ways by serving the commercial fashion system while coming on like a fire-breathing, free-thinking radical. “There’s an underground renaissance around the corner,” says a designer. “There’s a lot of us out there ready for change.” If they threw out the interminable fashion spreads and kept the well-researched features about androgyny (the issue’s theme), synth punk, and the use of color in architecture, it would make an engagingly eccentric arts mag—it already reads like it’s been hijacked by art-school lecturers. As it stands, Wound goes to a lot of editorial trouble for something that’s bound to be treated as a flipbook. Let Them Eat Cake, the best-designed title in my informal survey, is much lighter on its feet, making this fresh-faced fashion newcomer one to watch, although it has a long way to go to match the editorial confidence and panache of The Face or i-D, which were always worth reading in their heyday.

Most of these magazines are small-scale, intimate ventures in which the presence and personality of the people who make them is evident. Amelia’s Magazine, a lavish, ultra-feminine, relentlessly patterned and curlicued production—reading it feels a bit like being smothered in a pile of floral cushions—is the creation of publisher–editor–art director Amelia Gregory, a one-woman, home-publishing powerhouse. Issue eight is as thick as Vogue: This one may go far. By contrast, Karen is an agreeably petite, restrained, and almost poetic meditation on everyday life and ordinary experience in words and pictures, put together by someone who may be called Karen. It’s about as close to a personal blog as a magazine could be.

Leslie argues that the future of magazines (such as it is) lies in becoming even more magazine-like and supplying distinctive, design-led experiences that you can’t get from the web: unusual paper stock, page formats, special extras, freebies. These British independent magazines, which usually depend on a symbiotic relationship with a website, certainly cater to an enduring need for tactile, smell-the-ink, hold-it-in-your-hands “thing-ness.” While none of these titles could yet be called a classic, several of them—Bad Idea, Little White Lies, Karen—do convey a sense of real necessity. They also confirm that the urge to publish a magazine, even now in the age of immediate online dissemination, comes from seeing thoughts and opinions given the tangibility and satisfying permanence of ink on paper. Adventurous ideas have always required words for their fullest expression. Magazines will surely wither without good writing.

More information about PRINT: http://www.printmag.com/design_articles/observer_not_dead_yet/tabid/360/Default.aspx

Happy birthday VICE! VICE has 2 years and celebrates this anniversary this Friday 13rd in Brussels. Entrance with invitation at Viceland http://www.viceland.com/ or tatijana@vicemagazine.be Friday 13rd June 2008
Recyclart, 17, rue de ursulines, 1000 Brussels, belgium.

Thanks to all participants! The Magazine Lounge entitled “Printing the Fashion and Fashioning the Print” was inaugurated last Monday 2nd June at the Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna.

The event was accompanied by lectures on Magazine Culture given by Jeremy Leslie, Colophon co-founder and Executive Creative Director at John Brown Group- who made an incredible A to Z overview selection of magazines- Joachim Baldauf, Publisher of Vorn Magazine explained his carrier of editor and the relation with his work as photographer. The Spanish fashion photographer Luis Sanchis presented a choice of his best shots: Courtney Love on a beach, Leonardo di Caprio with hangover, Robbie Williams hanging in the sky of LA. The next day was the turn of Juan Montenegro, Editor in Chief and Creative Director of b-guided; Marcus Ross, European Fashion Director of VICE and Ken Miller, Editorial Director of Big Man and Editor in Chief 2002-2007 of TOKION. In Vienna, mood is about Magazine Culture during the festival!

Magazine Lounge curated by Colophon.
Haus Wittgenstein Parkgasse 18, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Ends: 8.6.2008

Exhibition-Lounge inside the sublime Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna…

…which one choosing?…

…Jeremy Leslie’s lecture on Magazine Culture

…Rush during the opening…

…the calm after the storm…

20 June 2008, from 6.30 to 9.30 pm, Galerie Issue, 38, rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris

by Jeremy Leslie

Here are some pictures from the Colophon room at the 8 Festival for Fashion and Photography last week. There was lots of interest in the exhibition, which was curated by my Colophon colleague Mike Koedinger and featured a selection of independent magazines including Kasino A4, Vorn and B East. The hanging mechanisms worked well – people could flick through the magazines but not remove them.

The exhibition and accompanying talks took place at the Haus Wittgenstein, a beautifully maintained modernist villa with the tall ceilings that seem typical of Vienna. The city is one of those smaller European ones that effortlessly maintain their historical architecture while adding stunning modern buildings, the Haus Wittgenstein being an older example.

The theme of the festival was magazine culture, and I gave the opening talk, an overview of current independent magazines. To give it some structure I presented an alphabetical selection from Amelia’s Magazine to ZingMagazine. There’s a QuickTime movie of my slides below. The choices aren’t a list of my favourites, but an attempt to present a varied selection of independent titles. And yes, I did cheat for X.

Video at:
http://magculture.com/blog/?p=1901#more-1901

The Colophon 2009 - International Magazine Symposium - team has been asked to select and invite “creative magazines that influence the fashion scene”.

With the kind collaboration of B east (Estonia), Bon (Sweden), Celeste (Mexico), Code (Holland), Dik Fagazine (Poland), Editor & Art Director - The Glossy Zine (USA), encens (France), Kasino A4 (Finland), Lodown (Germany), Magazine (France), Me (USA), Nico (Luxembourg), Nuke (France), Omagiu (Romania), Rojo (Spain), Scarlet Cheek (UK), Sneaker Freaker (Australia), Stirato (Italy), This is a Magazine / This is not a Magazine (Italy), Vanidad (Spain), Varoom (UK) and View of the Times (Spain).

The third festival for fashion & photography, initiated and organized by Unit F büro für mode, will take place from 28 May to 6 June 2008. For the past eight years, Unit F has been accompanying Austrian fashion designers on their way toward greater professionalism and internationalization. What started out as a small ceremony for presenting the Austrian Fashion Awards has with time evolved into a self-confident celebration of the Austrian fashion scene.

Responsible for driving this development while providing continuous support for the domestic fashion scene are the two heads of Unit F, Ulrike Tschabitzer-Handler and Andreas Oberkanins. Thanks to their concentrated efforts Unit F has developed over the course of the past eight years into an internationally networked promotion and presentation platform. Public and private-sector enterprises interested in investing in the development of Austrian fashion have supported this network by for example sponsoring awards for Austrian fashion designers and funding their international marketing efforts.

For ten days Vienna will once again become a fashion hub where the Austrian and international fashion scene will display its stunning contemporary diversity. In various venues throughout the city, fashion shows and current collections will be presented, and exhibitions and lectures will be held on the topics of fashion photography and magazine culture, along with the traditional presentation ceremonies for the AFA - Austria Fashion Awards. In addition to the program that Unit F büro für mode has conceived and organized especially for the 8 festival for fashion & photography, Unit F’s stepped-up cooperation with various fashion and art institutions as well as Vienna’s fashion design stores, galleries and party planners will ensure that this year’s festival offers even more variety.

IMAGE CAMPAIGN

The festival’s two core themes of fashion & photography come together to form a symbiotic unit in the annual image campaign. Photography makes a congenial partner for fashion, capturing it in compelling pictures and thus creating the very image on which it thrives.

The theme of this year’s image campaign – Colours – revolves around the abundance of facets awaiting discovery on the Austrian fashion scene. Conceived by Unit F, the campaign is being realized by a creative team headed by renowned German photographer Joachim Baldauf. As last year, the key role is played by the latest outfits created by Austrian fashion designers.

The production of the image campaign for the 8 festival for fashion & photography, made possible by the support of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour, lends expression to t he considerable significance of the young fashion scene for the domestic economy.
FASHION AWARDS

While back in the year 2000 the presentation of the Austrian Fashion Awards took place more or less as a “cellar ceremony”, the framework has become increasingly prestigious in the intervening years, while at the same time, thanks primarily to the engagement of the private sector, the range of prizes included in the AFA – Austria Fashion Awards has expanded to encompass the following:

• Fashion Award of the Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture (BMUKK)
A one-year grant for working with an international designer
Award money: 13,200 EUR (within Europe) to 18,000 EUR (outside of Europe)
• Fashion Award of the City of Vienna
Participation in an international fashion trade fair or festival
Award money: 10,000 EUR
• Die Presse Award for International PR
Puts winner in contact with an international press agency and pays agency fee
Award money: 15,000 EUR
• Kontakt. Fashion Award by Erste Bank
Award conferred by the Erste Bank on fashion designers from Central and Eastern Europe
Award money: 4,000 EUR
• Editorial Award – Award for Fashion Photography
Award for the best unpublished fashion editorial
Award money: 3,000 EUR
• so fresh. the jewellery award by Pierre Lang
Award presented by Pierre Lang for contemporary European jewellery design
Award money: 10,000 EUR

SHOWS

so fresh. the jewellery award by Pierre Lang, one of the highest-endowed and best-known jewellery awards in Europe, will be presented in 2008 for the third year to an outstanding talent in the field of contemporary jewellery design. The winning works as selected by an international expert jury will be displayed in a live show.

departure – wirtschaft, kunst und kultur gmbh, an enterprise of the City of Vienna designed to stimulate the creative industries, will present its departure fashion night for the fourth time as part of the festival for fashion & photography. On view will be the collections of fashion designers who have received support in the scope of departure’s promotion schemes.

At the Show Angewandte 2008, a fixed feature on Vienna’s culture scene for many years now, final projects by Veronique Branquinho’s fashion class at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna will be presented. The university is organizing the Show Angewandte 2008 as independent solo organizer within the framework of the 8 festival for fashion & photography.

LECTURES AND EXHIBITIONS

Public lectures have been held at the festival for three years, taking up themes of current pertinence to the fields of fashion, art, media and commerce, and opening them up for discussion.

This year, international industry insiders will analyse the topic of Magazine Culture, shedding light on this area from their respective points of view.
In 2008 the lectures will be accompanied by a magazine lounge. Under the title Printing the Fashion and Fashioning the Print – curated by the founder of Colophon – International Magazine Symposium, Mike Koedinger – the contents of the lectures and the discussion process will be carried forward in visual form.

The exhibition Fashion Is Dead – Virus Spreaders and Tightrope Walkers, organized by Shotview Photographers Management (Vienna/Berlin), presented by Kozva Rigaud and curated by Werner Hanak-Lettner, will take an exclusive look at the theme of fashion photography. Photographers represented by Shotview will present their works for the first time in a group exhibition, among them Joachim Baldauf, Luis Sanchis, Christina Kruse, Jork Weismann, Henrique Gendre, Sesse Lind and Wiebke Bosse.

In addition, a separate day during the festival will be devoted to exhibitions of fashion and art. A number of Vienna galleries and art institutions, including MOMENTUM PHOTOGRAPHIE / EDITIONEN, futuregarden/schaulager kunstbuero, Ostblick and elektro gönner, will be taking part in the festival for fashion & photography for the first time in 2008.

SHOPS

Selected Viennese fashion design stores – be a good girl, NACHBARIN, MAK DESIGN SHOP, Soup and Fish and MÜHLBAUER – will present fashion by and cooperation projects with Austrian designers.
The Guerilla Store will this year once again temporarily set up shop in a Vienna store beyond the duration of the 8 festival for fashion & photography, in cooperation with the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. Nelleke Strijkers, owner of the Amsterdam shop SPRMRKT, will select items from the collections of various labels for sale in the store.

PARTIES

The fact that fashion is today more than ever an expression of our lifestyles is demonstrated by the numerous parties that will take place during the 8 festival for fashion & photography, including the FM4 Club, VICE Party (featuring the presentation of the VICE Award), INDIE Party and NUMU Party. The Icke Micke Party on the last day of the festival will be the official closing event.

No UO designer collection

There will be no presentation at this year’s festival of the UO designer collection from UO Urban Ottakringer. The reason the traditional Viennese brewery declined the invitation to participate in the 8 festival for fashion & photography is the European Cup football championship taking place in Austria this June.

More information at:
www.8festival.at
www.unit-f.at

Colophon participates to new exhibitions. This year, Colophon - International Magazine Symposium – will participates in two separate exhibitions by inviting “creative magazines that influence the fashion scene”.

Dysfashional, 12.03–8.06.2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland, at MUDAC (Swiss Design Museum) www.mudac.ch

And to the 8th Festival for Fashion & Photography, 26.05 - 05.06.2008 in Vienna, Austria http://www.8festival.at/
Come and see us!

Summer 2008 Issue. On Thursday 10 April 2008, was launched the new Nico international at Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris.

More info at:
http://www.nicomagazine.com/home/

Nico interviews & fashion
230 pages
10€
International Magazine, Edition France
Published by www.mikekoedinger.com

Nico on tour:
10.04.08 Paris Galerie Magda Danysz 11.04.08 Dusselddorf Radical Advertising Exhibition
17-18.04.08 Milan Salone internazionale del Mobile
25-28.04.08 Hyeres 23rd Festival international de mode et de photographie
02-05.06.08 Vienna 8festival / Festival Fashion & Photography
02-04.07.08 Barcelona Bread And Butter

For who’s coming see you there!

Through parallel fashion and photography competitions, the Festival International de Mode et de Photographie à Hyères, directed by Jean-Pierre Blanc since its creation 22 years ago, gathers every year under the spotlight ten young fashion designers and ten young photographers under the patronage of an international jury.

An observatory of trends as well as an international launching pad, the Hyères festival has showcased, more than 300 first-time collections by new fashion designers from all over the world and exhibited the works of over 80 young and innovative photographers. On every edition, the festival presents at the Villa Noailles —the landmark cubist villa built in the 1920’s by Mallet-Stevens — several exhibitions that explore the permeating boundaries between art, photography and fashion.

The Festival’s public increases year after year, attracting designers, industrialists, trendwatchers, agents, buyers, textile federations, distributors, gallerists, museum directors, department stores.
The festival’s aim is to offer young talents a genuine professional opportunity by providing them with material and logistical support, as well as profitable contacts and intensive media exposure.
The general public is invited to vote after the fashion shows for an audience award.
All exhibitions are admission-free and remain open until early June.

Hyères 2008
23ème Festival International de mode et de photographie
25, 26, 27 and 28 April
Exhibitions until 1st June 2008

More info at:
http://www.villanoailles-hyeres.com

contact:
T +33 (0)4 98 08 01 98
contact@villanoailles-hyeres.com

New issue of Blaadje is out now! Release of Blaadje issue Nr.4 was held in Amsterdam on Thursday 6th March 2008.Inspiration a capricious thing? Of course not. It comes standard with Blaadje 4. Blaadje 4 is the best medicine against falling leaves and hibernation. With Blaadje Nr.4 go completely inspired in 2008. Blaadje 4 is the reference for editors, advertising agencies, modeling agencies and for every communications professional.
“For the operation of Blaadje and the annual Magazine Party, we have decided to set up a foundation: Stichting The Black Tiger. The foundation is named after the giant prawns that are served annually at Totempaal’s Gamba Party for publishers and marketing managers. The foundation has been deliberately created to make it clear that Blaadje and the Magazine Party are non-profit projects. The foundation sit Ernst Coenen, Frank Meijer (Totempaal Media) and Rupert van Woerkom (Hemels)”.

More info at http://www.blaadje.nl/site/

From 032c Bulletin March 2008. Save the Date: Saturday, 5th of April 2008
Next to the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin-Mitte, 032c will open its new MUSEUM STORE designed by KONSTANTIN GRCIC with an exhibition and party on Saturday, the 5th of April 2008.
Invitation to follow.
LEAD MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR

032c caused a mild media sensation in Hamburg last week by winning unexpected the prestigious German media award LEAD MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR against AD (Condé Nast) and STERN (Gruner & Jahr). BILD Zeitung says: “Ein globales Magazin!” Thank you.

www.leadacademy.de

NEW YORK TIMES T MAGAZINE ON 032c
There has been a lot of coverage of the new design aesthetic of 032c Magazine, but hopefully the final word on the new ugly phenomenon has now been said in the current issue of T: The New York Times
Style Magazine.

www.nytimes.com/indexes/2008/03/09/style/t/index.html#pageName=09Rawsthorn

Kasino A4 Magazine is ranked as one of the top 10 independent style magazines by the editor of Style Press Angelo Cirimele on WGSN.com.

Cirimele writes the following about Kasino A4:

“Finland, the other homeland of graphic design” could be a fine slogan for the independent-collective-published Kasino A4, which knows how to combine limited means – black and white – with graphic effect – glossy and monochrome cover.

Subjects are rich and angles surprising, written in quality English language. Fashion gets the spontaneous treatment; atmosphere can in turn be natural and peaceful, or violent and urban. With six issues published so far, Kasino A4 leaves no one indifferent.

Kasino A4 Magazine Issue #7, The Family Issue, is published April 20th, 2008. In connection with the family-theme Kasino A4 has an online campaign, which gives readers a chance to join the Kasino-family by pre-ordering the upcoming issue for 10 euros. In return the new family member will receive a personalised copy of The Family Issue delivered home.

More about the campaign and the magazine:
http://www.wearekasino.com/

Pekka Toivonen, Art Director
pekka@wearekasino.com +358 50 583 4415

Jonathan Mander, Editor
jm@wearekasino.com +358 40 747 5006<