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Mr Poynor should stop trying so hard to be politically correct and out of touch with the real world.

What is he saying that you should not travel business class? Or not meet “well-heeled” people? Or not travel! Does he realize that Star Trek transportation does not exits?

What an offensive and idiotic article.

Poynor says “It can’t go on, but Monocle pretends it can.”

I tend to think that Poynor has a better grasp of the real world and the ‘now’ than either yourself or these supposed ‘well-heeled, intelligent opinion leaders’ – who should by by there own logic be one step ahead of the bury your head in the sand bigrade.

Monocle may be a seen as a fitting swansong to the end of this lavish lifestyle – but long term, the values it projects really can’t go on.

I think its a bit O.T.T. but broadly i agree. I thought from the start it was a turkey.

Well, here in Helsinki we’re just wondering what to make of being named the sixth most liveable city in the world.

Do we have to stop complaining now?

Someone out of touch criticizing people for being out of touch.

The 20 Cities issue was by far the fluffiest Monocle yet. It’s a shame that it only took 4 issues for it to start slipping back into that slightly creepy, humourless camp that Wallpaper became known for in it’s pre-IPC days.

I still really enjoyed this issue although I found myself more often smirking where I think I was meant to be stroking my chin in a sage-like fashion… or something…

Back to the simple travel/lifestyle/advertising friendly editorial ideas Tyler used in Wallpaper… nothing new here but people are interested – especially those Aussie readers, the Sydney / Melbourne argument has now reached the uber-class.

Once again, a severe case of Pavlovian Tyler Brulé bashing. No question, he is polarizing with his attitude and the almost torturing repetitiveness of subjects, but still, all he´s doing is running a magazine that he funded with his own ambition and collected money, so i think it´s his right to follow his own path.

Poynor´s rant with its surprisingly lame attempts of wit and irony (am i alone to think that eg the first paragraph sort of leads to no relevance at all? Poynor doesn´t like the name Monocle? Oh my god.) is also leaving the normal tone of a critical analysis of a magazine.
He simply seems to hate Brulé and what he stands for – or better: what he believes Brulé is standing for, ignoring that Monocle, like early Wallpaper, has a good measure of playfulness and staging.

The morally pathetic accusation that Brulé is sort of responsible for Earth´s environmental desaster is the only funny passage of the article. Just envious, Rick?

I’m not a fan of Poyner who rarely sees the forest for the trees. The problem with Monocle isn’t simply it’s stance (which I do find irritating) – it’s that it isn’t a fully thought out stance. It’s surprisingly wishy-washy and full of marketing language that is entirely vapid. It reeks of someone trying to make a living who doesn’t actually believe in anything at all. I am loathe to call anything shallow, but in this case I must.

It is a mistery to me that a design critic as Poynor – defender of new ways of looking at things, isn’t that what design is about? – and hundreds of others, keep critisizing one of the few who try to make things different. I remember Emigré being criticised by everyone in the design establishment before it started to be accepted as mainstream, some years later.
Magazine publishing is about aspirations, about worlds we can not be part of. This is something everybody in the business knows, but Mr Poynor seem not to know. He should go to any shop and have a look at the magazine racks.
Or is that an unsustainable practise, buying magazines? If I think of all that paper waste…

Nobody polarises opinion as much as Tyler Brulé – except perhaps Rick Poynor.

I really wanted to like Monocle, and still find elements in it to read and enjoy, but as a package I find it largely irrelevant.

While Tyler-era Wallpaper* at least reflected the late-Yuppie era, I don’t see what Monocle‘s constituency is. The only thing I can be sure about is that its a very small club. The ultra-rich international movers Brulé is entranced by don’t need a magazine, and how many people really aspire to join that world?

Poynor perhaps overstates his case, but I believe he’s basically on-target. Monocle is not an Emigré-style independent start-up challenging the status quo, it’s Brulé re-running his Wallpaper* schtick.

And that schtick is surely way past it’s sell-by date.

Jeremy, indeed the Monocle subject, specially in your blog, polarises opinions and I see you still are in the bench of the non-convinced. Well, I can only say time must decide. I still am very very curious about the numbers. How many is he actually selling?
We shall see, but in the meantime I read it from cover to back.

Well put. Basically Tyler Brulé feels that it’s his mission to seek out the next most expensive thing from all corners of the world. Monocle, and most magazines for that matter, are mere references to things that most individuals can’t and most likely will never have. All of his ventures are based on wants and excess. His magazine is basically a guide for those wanting a personal assistant in a magazine form, a guidebook to tell them what they need to be above everyone else and where they can buy it. It’s absolute trash. I think Jeremy is right in saying that he’s missed the date. I think Tyler Brulé has his ideal man and his target market confused. The people who were reading wallpaper aren’t reading his new flavor.

monocle has picked up 2500 subscribers apparently, each paying £25 over the odds to have the magazine sent to them. to me, 2500 readers amounts to fuck all nationally let alone globally, but Brule seems to count this as a success.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=38095&c=1

I’d link to my blog but it’s down.

There, I said: So when and where shall I read Monocle? What an earnest and fat little thing it is, with its long features about boring subjects with thumbnail pictures in an undersized format. If anywhere, it will be on the plane because it will fit so easily into my hand-luggage and I cannot imagine wherever else I might ever want to read it.

Monocle is founded on a very tenuous assumption: that there is an international class of mainly male and mostly rich consumers with the time and inclination to read about Japanese sailors, Chilean finance ministers, Austrian lighting companies, German winemakers, Scottish videogamers, Afghan radio DJs, Brazilian hoteliers, Wisconsin bootmakers and Taiwanese educators.

Now we know there’s about 2500 of them: not quite one born every minute; still more than you’d have thought; but yet not quite enough to make any money out of, Tyler.

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