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Welcome to 2009…

…will the year be as bad as people say?

This is The Guardian’s view, and a more upbeat Mr Magazine’s.

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Museum Paper, Sede, Ein Magazine uber Orte

These are three lovely small magazines I’ve received over the past few months and been meaning to write about.

(Read more)

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Merry Christmas

Thank you for visiting.

This interruption in posting is not part of a trend but simply a Christmas break – enjoy yours and hope to see and hear from you in 2009.

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Capricious

There seem to be an ever-increasing number of independent photography magazines around at present. Whether that’s a result of the reduced amount of coverage given to reportage and art photography in the mainstream press or not, it’s definitely an area of growth in the independent press. 125 and Ei8ht have both been mentioned here before, but others include Foam, Day Four and Next Level.

All are good in there own way, but the magazine I want to concentrate on right now is Brooklyn-based biannual Capricious.

(Read more)

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MottoBerlin

Last week German magazine distributor Motto opened their first retail store, in Berlin, and celebrated with a week of events featuring a magazine a day: Mono.Kultur, Spike Art, Piktogram, Gagarin and Kilimanjaro all made presentations.

Sounds like a great series of events, and has got me thinking ahead again to the next Colophon. Just three months to go now, we’re in the final stages of planning and there’ll be plenty of exciting news to share in the new year.

Meanwhile, there are images and reports from Berlin now on the MottoBerlin blog.

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Magazine report for Ei8ht magazine, #5

Here’s my latest column for Ei8ht magazine, published in November.

(Read more)

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Distill #2

The second issue of Distill has been out a couple of weeks now. It remains a project I really want to like and support – the concept of a single publication that presents the best work from smaller, independent magazines is a strong one. But focusing primarily on the fashion part of this market limits it’s scope in my view. There are plenty of other aspects of independent magazines worth covering.

One highlight in issue two is Tony Chamber’s review of his favourite recent cover – Fabien Baron’s relaunch issue of Interview starring Kate Moss (below), in which he stresses how magazines need to be as much about product design as much as graphic design. It’s important how magazines feel. Magazine-y if you like.

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Between the Covers

An in-depth review of the ‘Between the Covers’ exhibition at London’s Women’s Library contains the following gem:

‘What Between the Covers reminds you again and again is that magazines, rather than naturally occurring phenomena summoned up by their readers’ desires, are in fact commodities of the most intricate kind. Few other artefacts, after all, have to be sold twice simultaneously to be considered successful. But this is exactly what a magazine editor must do, selling her product both to the reader via the cover price and to the advertisers through the rate card. As a result, women’s magazines proliferate, clone and collapse according to a positively Darwinian model of the market.’

The exhibition focuses on the women’s market but the above description applies across all markets.

Read the whole piece, by Kathryn Hughes, in the Guardian today, here.

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Amusement magazine

Jean Snow at PingMag takes a look at the genre-defying French magazine Amusement. The world’s only fashion-gaming magazine?

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Knees need feet

Thanks to CR Blog for pointing out that despite the presence of her knee, Leah Wood has lost the rest of her right leg on the latest Tatler cover.

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