Last week I did a live interview with Gert Jonkers and Jop von Bennekom, the editors of Fantastic Man, at the third What Design Can Do conference in Amsterdam. You can watch our conversation above (25mins).

The conference encompassed all types of design – graphics, architecture, digital, food, technology – and was one of the best-organised events I’ve taken part in. It took place at the Stadsschouwburg, a beautiful 19th century theatre and each day opened and closed with a gospel choir singing a design statement (ie Dieter Rams’ ten principles), the perfect way to wake people up. Speakers presented in twenty minute sessions, with a series of breakout sessions straight after lunch. Highlights included London digital design duo Hellicar & Lewis, Indian architect Rahul Mehrotra and food designer Marije Vogelzang. They’re already planning WDCD 2014, well worth going if you can.

Magazine-wise, as well as my Fantastic Man interview, Rene and Anneke from Amsterdam’s best magazine shop Atheneuam had a pop-up shop over the two days, and ran a breakout session about independent magazines with some astute observations about current indies. And editor of Italian Wired Carlo Antonelli gave a talk which seemed to polarise the audience – I’m looking forward to catching up with that on video.

Stool Pigeon founder Phil Hebblethwaite has wise counsel for anyone thinking of launching a magazine, ‘Treasure your independence…’

Plastik interviews Andrew about his recent book-about-books ‘Fully Booked’.

Vice have an exhibition of work by their favourite illustrators in London until June 2.

Boat magazine’s latest issue visits Kyoto. Read an interview with editor Erin Spens.

Music site Pitchfork opts for quality over quantity, trials further editorial experiments like this for Daft Punk.

The issue will be easily recognisable to anyone who picked up the launch issue late last year. The same format is repeated, which is sound as it’s a strong one. Loose-stitched open binding (actually improved from issue 1) and a kaleidoscopic foil block title take good advantage of print and the bold use of colour is bright and appropriately happy. It looks and feels good.

Like many current independents, Perdiz is a magazine about people. It uses its basic theme – happiness – as an excuse to examine how different people live, and divides the content into long and short forms in an intelligent and well-paced manner. Despite being bilingual (it’s published from Barcelona in English and Spanish) it doesn’t feel cramped. Longer pieces don’t overstay their welcome and vary between being text-orientated and image-led (such as that above and below, about one man’s love of the sea and fishing).

The longer material is split up with pictorial spreads such as this collage of rainbow-based books covers by Kent Rogowski (above).

Plus there are briefer pieces of good news and a nicely put together illustrated list of ‘10 Things I changed to Improve My Life’ (above), with advice around managing email and travelling long haul.

There’s also a paeon to good grammar, well-illustrated by Raquel Gonzalez (above) that is a brave subject to deal with in two langauges at once. I can’t judge the Spanish but the English avoids mistakes.

Looking at these images, they don’t do full justice to the issue. Perdiz is a well-made and characterful magazine that hangs together as a whole – these pages are even stronger bound together.

Highly recommended.

(read my review of issue 1 here)

Perdiz #2 is currently available from the magCulture shop.

The New York Times has strict photo-manipulation policies, dropped only for fashion.

Mark Vessey makes art from magazine spines (thanks Warren).

A look back at the hugely influential The Whole Earth Catalog.

In London next week? Hear the Eye magazine team discuss their collaboration as part of It’s Nice That’s ‘Nicer Tuesday’, 28 May.

You have until the end of this week to vote for the PPA Cover of the Year. Andy Cowles has a great, informed, run-through of the odds.

Vince Frost recalls Big magazine, ‘It was raw, bold and simple. And very masculine. That’s probably why it still looks strong.’

Where are you today?
I am at my office in New York, in Times Square, the Condé Nast building.

What can you see from your window?
We are on the 22nd floor, and I have a very nice view of the Empire State Building. There is also a new building being built that is slowly rising up just to the left of our building. My staff comes in from time to time to watch the progress through my window. There are 30-40 workers on it at a time, amazing how fast it goes up.

What is your favorite magazine this morning?
I was looking through my bookshelves this morning, came across a bunch of issues I had saved of a Canadian magazine called Saturday Night, which had been published monthly for many decades. Around 2000 it was relaunched as a large-format weekly and was included as part of the National Post newspaper. Leanne Shapton was the new art director, and Paul Sahre had gone to Toronto to work on the redesign.  They did a great job on that project. It still looks beautiful and smart today – great covers, clever illustration, and bold, simple type and design, sort of like David Hillman’s Nova. So, Saturday Night is my favorite magazine this morning.

How many emails are waiting in your inbox?
Pretty manageable today, maybe 10.

What has been the highlight of your first year and a half at Vanity Fair?
I loved working on our Comedy Issue we did in January. Judd Apatow was the guest editor, and I am a huge fan of his movies, and comedy in general! It was great to collaborate with him and photographer Mark Seliger, who shot most of the issue. We did 3 separate group covers (above), with 12 people total, all comic icons.

Another issue that was a real highlight for me was this years’ Hollywood Issue. Bruce Weber shot the whole thing, and Marion Deuchars did all the hand-lettering (above). Collaborating with these two artists was real thrill. And one more bright spot this year, we just won the gold medal for our new Vanities section design at the SPD awards last week!  Nice to get recognition for work that the designers have been doing here over the last year.

You’ve been redesigning the magazine section by section. Which single design change/point made you think ‘yes, this is my magazine now.’
I think when we finished the September issue last year, everything sort of clicked. We had finished the redesign of the Fanfair section (above), Vanities was done, and we also had redesigned all the basic structural elements,  the ToCs, the contributors pages, the columns, back-page, the color palettes etc. Suddenly the overall look shifted slightly, and it became noticeable that it was evolving. Which is what we wanted, not a abrupt, drastic change visually, but a freshening-up overall.

Do you get to attend the famed Vanity Fair Oscars after party?
Yes! I have been very fortunate to attend the party for the last 2 years at the Sunset Tower Hotel in LA. It is a lovely weekend, and a really magical party. It is an incredible amount of work to prepare and orchestrate that party. I am in awe of the Special Projects department here at Vanity Fair, it’s such a complex undertaking for them to create that event.

What was the last thing your editor said to you?
He looked at the next issues ToC designs and said ‘Glorious’. He loves to look at and talk about design.

What are you looking forward to this week?
We are just finishing an issue, so I enjoy putting all the final touches on things, doing color corrections, fine-tuning the type. Also am working on some new design elements for our website, having a series of black and white portraits illustrated that are coming out nicely. And having lunch with photographer Jonathan Becker tomorrow.

What are you least looking forward to this week?
I think it all looks pretty sunny so far. I am sure something will come up though!

What are you doing after this chat?
I will get another coffee from the cafeteria, go to a design/photo production meeting to review all the stories for this issue and the next. And then Christian Schwartz from Commercial Type is coming in to go over work he is doing for us, and to discuss a couple of new projects.

Read Jeremy Leslie’s ‘Reputations’ interview with Chris Dixon in the upcoming 85th issue of Eye magazine.

Two thoughts:

1) I have no idea if this is deliberate product placement or not, but given that Carey Mulligan as Daisy IS on the cover of American Vogue this month (above), is this the first case of a movie predicting a magazine cover?

2) American Vogue’s 1922 covers of course weren’t photographs (that first happened ten years later). Instead, they featured highly stylized fashion illustrations like this one. Though it’s just possible that Gatsby was indeed referring to her look being sufficiently generic to satisfy these conditions, it seems doubtful, and so I would like to sound the mag-geek anachronism klaxon.

Spotted any other horrendous mag-related inaccuracies at the cinema lately?

This launch issue is a good read; I enjoyed editor Olivier Talbot’s reflections on having stuff nicked from the beach while surfing (above), and a piece about the consumerist nature of the sport (below) rings true.

There’s plenty of surf photography from around the world, and an excerpt from a French philosophical treatise on the sport (below). All nice stuff, and engaging enough, but what wins me over is the design by Jad Hussein. It is modern but unfussy, with a subject-appropriate spontaneous feel that belies the care that has been taken on every page.

This first issue has over 120 pages, and I’m not sure that volume of content about this subject can be maintained. I’d like to be proved wrong on that – there’s a general approach to life contained in the magazine that could be expanded on. Issue two is promised this autumn.

The launch issue is already sold out but you can see more of it on their website.

It all seems a long time ago now – mainly because it is a long time ago – but my memories of the magazine were brought back when I heard from Blitz’s fashion editor Iain R Webb. He was after a few thoughts for a book he was compiling about his fashion work at the magazine, and now that book (above) has just been published. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but hope to review it here soon.

My immediate memories are to do with the technology (or lack of), it being normal to smoke in the office (the art room had a permanent cloud of blue smoke hanging just above head height) and meeting some great people, not least my wife Lesley.

Design-wise, after a few issues I was given pretty much a free hand to make the sort of mistakes that taught me much for future work, though at the time I was convinced I was reinventing magazines. Yeh! Looking at copies now the reality was something a little more prosaic, though there’s the odd spread that makes me stop.

The book arrives at a perfect time, with so much interest in the eighties, and it brings renewed attention for the magazine. There’s the launch of an archive website, a Facebook page and a weekend of events at the ICA this weekend (May 18/19). A suitable preface to the V&A’s upcoming ‘Club to Catwalk  – London Fashion in the 1980s’ show.

‘As Seen in BLITZ: Fashioning ’80s Style’ by Iain R Webb is published by ACC.

magCulture is making a magazine – and we want your help.

It’s going to be a fast, one-off publication with the working title ‘My Favorite Magazine’, and all profits going to support Bob Newman (above), a great art director, true magaholic and the man behind Newmanology. You can read more about Bob’s situation here. The magazine will be published as a print-on-demand project through MagCloud.

Here’s your brief:
Choose your favourite single magazine issue, and tell us about it. Any magazine, from any country, from any era. To join in, take 1-3 hi-res photos of the issue (no more than three, and at least one should be of the magazine cover) and write 100-500 words about your choice. Then zip and send it (or, if the images are too big to email, a link to download them) along with:

Magazine name
Country
Date of publication
Your Name
Job Title
City, Country
Web address
Twitter name

to: myfavouritemagazine@magculture.com

Deadline: May 30th 2013

We’ll compile all the responses and prepare the print-on-demand magazine.

If you know anyone in magazine publishing (designers, editors, others) who would like to participate, particularly anyone who has a large following that might help increase the book’s press coverage and sales, please invite them to take part.

If you have any questions, email: myfavouritemagazine@magculture.com

FAQs:
1. Can I choose more than one magazine?
No, sorry. We’re making this for free in our spare time, and want to keep this simple.

2. When will the publication appear?
As soon as we can edit, design and produce it. It depends a little on how it will be made.

3. Who is making this?
Jeremy Leslie, founder of magCulture, and Andrew Losowsky, a New York-based editor and regular magCulture contributor.

4. Will every submission make it into the publication?
That’s the idea. If the volume of submissions becomes overwhelming, we might reconsider.

5. Does this include digital magazines?
Yes. Any magazine – printed, web, tablet – accepted.