August 31, 2008
Distill launches
I just picked up the launch issue of Distill. Billed as ‘The best of the international fashion and style press’, it’s a bi-monthly collection of work from various magazines selected by the editors and an editorial board that includes fashion designers Giles Deacon and Matthew Williamson alongside Stephen Gan from Visionaire, Deyan Sudjic from the Design museum here in London and Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massanet.
A pretty sound bunch of selectors, then, and their choices are presented very cleanly and simply. Divided into sections (Womanwear, Menswear etc) there’s an intro explaining the selections and highlighting themes, and then the various fashion stories are re-printed in full, and without further commentary, as they appeared in their original magazines.
When I first heard of the project I wasn’t sure publishers would be willing to contribute whole features like this, but full marks to the Distill team for making it happen. It can only help independent publishers to have a project like this out there.
Choices are wide – womanswear includes shoots from V, Numero, Acne Paper, S and The Room – and the comments intelligent. But it’s a difficult thing to present a series of disparate shoots like these in one run of pages, and I sense the magazine designers struggling how to deal with this. There are plenty of arresting images but any sense of pace is lost as you jump from story to story without ads or other visual relief. This, together with the way designers have opted for a pared back design so as not to conflict with the material they are presenting, leaves Distill itself rather cold and characterless.
It’s a very difficult area of editorial design, designing to present other creative work like this, but I can’t help feeling Distill could do it better. Perhaps the images of magazines are just too clinical and un-emotive?
Design aside, it’s great to see independent magazines being examined like this. Distill is an interesting idea that should develop to be a very useful resource for magaholics everywhere.
10 Comments
Comment on September 1, 2008 by Michael → Boicozine says:
Hey. You beat me to it (as usual)! :)
I’m finding the concept pretty weird. It’s a magazine about curating stuff from other magazines and unlike permanent food… http://www.shift.jp.org/en/archives/2004/06/permanent_food.html …there’s articles about why they’ve selected what… see, weird.
If the goal is to provide snippets of all the best stuff from all the best mags in one cheap and easy to read package (kind of like a paper version of Google Reader for fashion geeks) then I would agree, it could do better. They would need to cast a much much wider net for Distill to be useful in this way.
What I’d like to see is Distill featured in a magazine that reviews other magazines. It could be called the Magazine Review Magazine. They would have to review themselves on a regular basis too, just to complete the circle. Then we’ll really start to distil the magazine format down to it’s most basic essence. :)
Comment on September 1, 2008 by Vincent says:
What I would like to know is where on earth (or, more specifically, the south of the USA) I can find this magazine! Its website is just a banner, and the rest of the internet has little to offer.
Comment on September 2, 2008 by Cranky says:
This looks dreadful, the sample spreads look like a college project. Probably still going to buy it though!
Comment on September 2, 2008 by jeremy says:
the subscribe section might help, or email them direct on the contacts section.
Comment on September 2, 2008 by Rob says:
Just got a copy, really like it. I think it’s a brilliant idea and really useful. Will be interesting to see what happens next.
Oh and the magazine directs you to http://www.distilldigital.com
Comment on September 7, 2008 by Natasha says:
This caught my eye at the train station this morning and I was rather intrigued by the idea. I bought it, but left feeling disappointed. To be honest I think this magazine is rather pointless as it is simply a collage of bits of other mags. Hmm..
Comment on September 11, 2008 by Ben says:
Didn’t you write the article on the inside back page, though?
Comment on September 11, 2008 by jeremy says:
I reviewed 032c magazine for them, yes.
Comment on September 13, 2008 by Stuart Stapleton says:
Christopher Lockwood is a genius!! In a sinking and saturated world of indy publishing, he says f***k it I’m gonna make some money and not bother dealing with dramatic art directors and fashioninstas.. im just gonna reprint the best of the season, so WE (the consumer) don’t have to buy 10 different over priced magazines… we just get DISTILL instead. Well done.
Comment on October 4, 2008 by elizabeth lewis says:
what a fab idea i want to subscribe !!!
