MAGCULTURE.COM / BLOG

‘To make you feel at home, Jeremy, Bollocks!’

Here’s the text of the email discussion I had with Coupe editor Bill Douglas and ex-editor of RayGun Neil Feineman earlier this year, (issue above), complete with Bill’s Brit-style swearing…

This — more than any other time — is the age of personal expression, for good or bad. Facebook, MySpace, blogging, camera phones, reality tv, etc., etc., etc., have created a worldwide generation of shrewd and shameless self marketers. The internet has become a far reaching and cheap forum for personal projects, visions, and ideas. The niche genre of personal magazines, existing outside the realm of the commercial hoard, has been experimenting with this ethic for years. But, can it, or does it, still have a place in our ever more electronic world? I chat (ironically, via email) with a couple of magazine mavericks, Neil Feineman in la and Jeremy Leslie in the uk, about the state of the personal magazine, and other things too.

Neil Feineman was supposed to be a college professor but somehow ended up at Playgirl magazine in the late 1970s. Fortunately, he started writing for publications like The Los Angeles Times, Self, Los Angeles, and The Face before launching magazines like Beach Culture, RayGun, Gravity, and Revolution. These days, he mostly writes books like Geek Chic, and is about to go on tour with uk djs Sasha and Digweed, the subjects of his next book.

Jeremy Leslie has been designing magazines for over twenty years. He is the Executive Creative Director at the John Brown Group (www.johnbrowngroup.co.uk), co-founder of the independent magazine conference Colophon (www.colophon2009.com), and author of the books Issues and magCulture. Read his blog at www.magCulture.com. Jeremy lives in London, England.

Bill Douglas is the man behind the curtain at Coupe magazine. He is the founder of The Bang, a multi-disciplinary Toronto-based studio specializing in book and publication design and has created works for dozens of publishers and hundreds of authors.
Bill is a frequent guest lecturer at schools, organizations and events. Along, with his wife Sacha, Bill runs Coupe Space, an event gallery funhouse which houses the whole operation and is host to an eclectic array of events, launches, and shows.

Bill: We might as well begin here. It’s been fifteen years since the launch of RayGun. One lasting memory of I have of that magazine is how it really did feel like a personal project done out of love. It looked and acted like the people making it owned it and had carte blanche calling the editorial and design shots. Even if that wasn’t the case. This spirit is now of course everywhere on the web but fading on the newsstands. Do you think an overtly personal sentiment can still work in the magazine world?
————–
Neil: RayGun, like all the magazines I was a part of — and pretty much did for myself, without any sort of corporate interference — was, to me, an extended dialogue between myself, David Carson [RayGun’s original art director] and a host of interesting people (including the subjects of the articles, the writers, photographers, artists, etc.). We weren’t getting paid to do the magazine, had day jobs and were coming off a magazine called Beach Culture that was an even more personal statement. Beach Culture was one of the first magazines to come from within the surf/skate world to reflect my own reality and take on the beach.

The principal reasons for RayGun in my own mind was to see what it would be like to apply those same motivations to a music magazine. I remember that I had several goals. The first was to have a famous musician call and offer to be in RayGun after the first issue. The second was to get to meet Perry Farrell, who had blown me off in Beach Culture. The third was to develop an umbrella format in which alternative artists of every genre could co-mingle. We hit those goals very quickly, with Michael Stipe calling me, Warner Bros giving me Farrell on the third issue and throwing a wide range of musicians into the mix. But for a variety of reasons, RayGun quickly settled into a somewhat predictable format. The magazines that followed, including Gravity and Box, which I felt were better work from a personal perspective, benefitted from a lifestyle perspective.

And while I miss the chance to do print magazines a lot, and feel that the web is a pale imitation of the magazine experience, I doubt that there is room to make a mark like RayGun’s again for several reasons. Fifteen years ago, people still looked to magazines to be cultural leaders and there was a cache to working on them. More importantly, 15 years ago, people didn’t expect non-linear, interactive experiences from a magazine. It’s that more than anything else that’s done the magazine in.
As I write this — for Coupe, a magazine that is as polished and personal as any I’ve seen in a long time — I am perfectly aware that it is still perfectly possible to do personal magazines. But it’s almost impossible, I think, to make a living off of them or to expect them to make the kind of impact RayGun did, selling out of its first issue several times without any advance notice or marketing budget. And, no matter how much I try not to fall prey to “old-fart” syndrome, I really don’t think we’re the better for it.
————–
Bill: Five or ten years ago I would see wacky little publications popping up on the stands on a much more regular basis than I see today. Even “big money” start-ups seem more and more a rarity. I can only assume that people are now taking their little ideas and making them a reality online. Hey, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper, less of a hassle, much less of a commitment, and easier to pull off. But for me it would be a much more empty accomplishment. Plus, you can’t hold and feel, and most importantly, smell a website. Magazines are objects. A website can never be. I wonder if a magazine like Very out of New York, now 10 years old, still alive, and looking good, would exist on paper if started today? Or Adbusters? Or Stop Smiling? Or . . .
————–
Neil: I often tell people, many of whom were magazine people 15 years ago, the same thing — the tacticity, the linear direction, the basic physicality of the magazine. And they tell me to a person that while I’m right, there are fewer and fewer people like us out there each year. I can’t argue with him, as I don’t know anyone anymore outside some graphic designers that live for magazines the way I used to.
————–
Bill: But let’s face it, these types of magazines, to varying degrees being driven by designers are going to find that designers are a big part of the market. This will always happen whenever the design is the message — or at least one of the messages — on purpose or otherwise.
————–
Jeremy: I can appreciate your negativity on this issue Neil, I hear it from others too, but I also see and hear lots of positivity about magazines. I work at a company that creates loads of magazines, and we are also beginning to make websites too. There’s a natural development. But as yet I don’t see magazines disappearing at the expense of websites. The two forms can co-exist well. In fact I go with David Renard’s thesis that those magazines that rely on quick turnaround — the weekly mass market — will suffer from the web, while the more esoteric/niche titles will not only survive but do so in a manner that will accentuate and exaggerate those qualities that make them magazines — the tangible, tactile and emotional appeal of print that you describe very well above, Bill. Those magazines that continue in print will be more magazine-y then ever. This is a good thing!
————–
Neil: I am sorry the comments are being perceived as negative. At least in the States, the people I know who still work in magazines, including those in the surf and skate and music sides of things, are constantly complaining about the interference from advertisers, falling sales and pressure from publishers to play it safe, sell product and promote a consumer lifestyle. There are certain magazines that do their job well, I think, like Details, Wired, Dwell, but they are yuppie tracts, where one is encouraged to buy the $100 scarf, the $3.5 million prefab house, etc. Anyway, I wouldn’t call them hotbeds of personal expression. Anyway, I’m not an idiot. I know that it is possible to make magazines, and I know that there are a lot of them out there. The real question is, can a magazine capture the zeitgeist, create a face for a subculture and galvanize a community the way that RayGun, Wired, Surfer, Thrasher, Beach Culture, Rolling Stone, The Face, Wallpaper, even Flex and Muscle and Fitness did? When was the last time a magazine did that? And if you are the kid whose subculture needs that sort of documentation and, being a kid, you already know how to shoot photos and videos, blog and art-direct a website that can spread virally, would you go to a magazine format that strips you of that ability to offer a multimedia approach to make your statement, knowing that on top of all the work, you’re going to have to find twice as much revenue just to pay for printing — would you still choose a print magazine over a website? I doubt it.

What may happen — indeed, what’s already happening — is that print becomes an anthologized by-product of successful websites. I know that’s how we worked on Geek Chic, a project I did with Submarine. In a different time, it would have been a magazine. But we launched it on the web, primarily because we got a grant from the Dutch government. To experiment with this idea we had to do an “unfolding” web magazine (a process that I thought would retain the linear control that editors of print enjoy). In the end, though, we decided to do a book rather than a magazine, both for financial and artistic reasons.

I guess for me, then, who has never really enjoyed corporate support from most of the magazines I developed, the more interesting question is not how to launch a new personal print project, but how to capture elements of the magazine experience on the web, so that editors, writers, photographers and illustrators can still create communities, but without the tyranny of user-uploaded interactivity and expansive linking that encourages readers to leave the self-contained universe rather than surf outside it, as quickly as possible.

Sorry to go off on a rant here, but I would love to hear what kind of new, personal magazines have demonstrated the kind of loyalty and influence that websites serving the hipper components of the underground youth market, who got all the cool magazines anyway, do on a regular basis to their target audience. Because believe me, I would like nothing better than a return to the days where magazines set standards, started trends and held subcultures accountable.
————–
Bill: Sounds to me like we’re talking about the same thing. But to answer your question, Neil, “Can a magazine capture the zeitgeist, create a face for a subculture and galvanize a community” the way they did in the day? It’s tough. There’s now an entire generation that has grown up with the net. It’s what they know. It’s where society is going. I would say one of the most recent magazines to do the above is probably Vice (not that new anymore) which seemed to perfectly reflect the subculture it was targeting. And again, just like the magazines we’ve mentioned it definitely was, and still is, to a degree, a painfully personal extension of Suroosh Alvi and the boys. Launched out of Montreal, and now a worldwide cultural media empire, Vice was able to be what it wanted to be and make a shit load of money while doing it. And maybe that’s it. People really like making money these days.
————–
Jeremy: From a European perspective, it’s harder than ever to cut through the mass with an alternative publication. But that isn’t stopping people doing it, there are loads of examples out there, and what’s interesting is there’s an international market for these magazines (in both directions). Just as there are more magazines altogether, there are more experimental independents out there too, with specialist stores and even their own biannual conference, Colophon. I designed the book for that event and the listing section carried over 1,000 examples of international, independent magazines

I wonder if anyone has really made a living from that type of magazine? Even your statement above, Neil, contradicts itself. First you say you made RayGun while you had day jobs then you talk of not being able to make a living off that type of magazine today. I think all non-mainstream publications start as hobbies/labours of love and go from there. They either disappear for lack of interest, keep struggling on and survive thanks to the dedication of their creators, or become really successful and never look back. And of course that last option is rare. But there are examples of successes, usually associated with a second business – invariably a creative agency looking to promote itself. I’m thinking of 032c, Self Service and indeed Bill’s Coupe and in a way, wasn’t that what RayGun was about? In the uk it was taken seriously as a design title rather than a music mag. Other ways through are the use of us tax breaks, as in art-lit mags McSweeney’s and Esopus.

The crossover to success is tougher perhaps but that’s not stopping people from trying!
————–
Neil: I don’t see the contradiction. A lot of people — David and Marvin (the publisher), to name two — made substantial amounts of money from RayGun, and its plan was always to make money. And I thought we were talking about magazines, not fanzines. Fanzines can be personal expressions done for a variety of reasons, but I’m talking about magazines that make deeply personal statements that also pay professional talent at least a living wage. That take ads, are on real newsstands as opposed to specialty boutique shops and have staffs handling ads, distribution, etc. Every one of the magazines I was talking about in my own career had elements of financial responsibility and were personal statements to targeted audiences about a subculture. I don’t see that in most of the magazines in museum stores or whatever.

As for RayGun not being a music magazine, by the time it hit Europe, that’s all it was. I left after the fifth issue because it had lost all sight of the music roots and had become a forum for David and for design, which seemed somewhat self-serving and boring. In the magazines I did that I was most proud of, I thought there was a blend of style, substance and financial remuneration working together. Not that I’m complaining. After RayGun, people threw big consulting money at me for a long time. But that was never really the goal for me.
————–
Jeremy : What’s happening in printed magazines is happening everywhere. Once upon a time we had a limited number of well-watched tv stations, a few but well-followed new record releases, a small but well-read range of magazines. The choice was limited. Now there’s satellite and cable, iTunes, more magazines than before. Plus the web, email, chatrooms, ps3, mobiles/cellphones etc. etc. etc. It’s harder for any one tv show/record/magazine to have that really deep and influential effect that these media had when we grew up.

On top of that, as you identify in your statement on Vice, Bill, the whole issue of independent versus mainstream is less important. A difference is often still necessary but the black and white 80s world of Punk vs the commercial is over. The revolution rapidly becomes commercialized as each trend gets hoovered up. And this doesn’t matter any more. It’s just the way it is. I remember a panel discussion about independence I did a couple of years ago in London. Neville Brody, The Face art director, argued strongly that independence was really important and that so many of today’s cultural and media creations were dirtied by their willingness to accept sponsorship and commercialization. As someone of Neville’s generation, I found myself comfortable with that view at first, of course this was a bad thing. Wasn’t it?

But then a guy from the Wooster Collective argued the other way, and it was clear that the audience of mainly students agreed with him. They saw no conflict in mixing creativity and money, and by the end of the evening I found myself coming round to that view. It’s revolutionary in its own way: what’s so great about independence if only 200 people know about your project?

So, yes it’s much harder to get that wow factor across great numbers today. Not because magazines aren’t as capable but because no single medium has that power any more. The challenge is linking media to create one’s message, and here I agree with you Neil about your wish for an online equivalent of the magazine. I’ve yet to see something satisfying though.
————–
Neil: I have to say I’m with Neville Brody. I think independence is critical. I think the fact that most people don’t see the conflict of commercialism, sponsorship and cooption, if that’s a word, doesn’t make it a crucial factor in the development and protection of artistic freedom. Historically, it’s always been the case that most people are motivated by security and the pursuit of wealth. The fact that it’s become such a given, however, makes me fear for the future on certain humanistic levels. Many of my younger friends are adamant about the evils of rent control and property tax ceilings for older people because they feel that the market should be honored without concern for the plight of fixed incomes. These people are, for the most part, media hipsters. That even they feel contempt for the “bleeding heart” punks and have never questioned authority or felt the need for viewing of the world in anything other than economic terms does not, as I said, bode well.

In any event, I think the fact that you and I have yet to see anything satisfying in terms of web magazines illustrates a fundamental weakness of the web relative to magazines. As your comments on RayGun prove, somewhere in the mid-1990s, the balance of power shifted from editors to art directors. This had some positive and some negative effects, but at its best, it allowed for brilliant integrations of words and images that made the whole greater than the sum of its parts. You really can’t do that on the web, because design by definition stops right before the articles begin. I’ve been trying for several years to bring a “RayGun” approach to the web and have had some significant budgets to work with, but every time, it’s clear that the real design and substructure of the web belongs to the programmers and technologists who, frankly, could give a fuck about the power of variable fonts, pull quotes, opening spreads, etc. For someone used to doing high-end conceptual art design editorial, it’s a significant problem.
————–
Bill: With Coupe, I’ve purposely kept the the website fairly utilitarian. It functions more as a business card or a teaser for the magazine. And it opens up the market like nothing else can. I never thought I’d have readers in Iran! I really couldn’t imagine running the magazine without it. It’s hard to fathom how Time or National Geographic or Mad or RayGun did it before the web. But I still have little desire to make the Coupe website a vehicle for original editorial or creative content even though there are aspects and elements of the web that are becoming more and more appealing to me creatively. And like-minded magazines like Carl*s Cars and Fantastic Man definitely take the same approach with the web.

Of course if a magazine consultant were to sit down with me he’d likely say I have my head up my ass, especially since there’s no advertising on the site. But hey, there’s never been much advertising in the magazine and I think the fans of Coupe like it that way.

I also think that with many micro mags it comes down to a case of time allotment. There’s only so many hours in the day and in my case Coupe is far from the only thing I do. Something has to be neglected and it’s the website. All that being said I think there are some amazing things that can be done online with Coupe. Some day.
————–
Jeremy: Agreed 100% on the failure to date of websites to match the interactive experience offered by printed magazines (one tangent here: Neil, you talked of magazines being linear earlier. I believe one of the joys of the magazine format is that although planned in a linear way they are generally read more randomly, in a non-linear manner). The problem is the technologists and their overarching control of the process. This will change though, and I think already is beginning to, as the form becomes more naturalized to creators and users.

One really annoying blind alley that many publishers persist in believing in is the flip-page pdf that mimics the print format in the same way early tv had announcers stood in front of radio mics talking. What is the point? Editors and publishers are to blame for this – designers hate it!

As for the balance tipping toward the art director in print, I’d put it another way. The balance has certainly moved toward the visual, but it’s for editors and art directors to understand that together. In a sense, design has become content. One theory I have is that these two previously separate disciplines are converging – the senior creative on a magazine will cross the boundaries and deal both with an ideas development and its subsequent presentation. We have seen several high-profile editorial appointments in the UK recently where creative directors have become editors.

I think if you look around there are many great editorial projects out there today. They’re not in the style/fashion sector (my background) nor the music sector (yours, Neil), but in a more specifically editorial sector: you mention Fantastic Man, Bill, a great magazine in any respect and building a loyal readership despite a small circulation. It serves as a critique of every other men’s magazine currently available. Carl*s Cars is unique too, and building readers and advertising (and copycats — see Car Wash). Others? Kasino a4, Karen, Esopus, Monocle, 032c . . .
————–
Bill: getting back to the “balance tipping toward the art director” thing, I actually think that the pendulum has swung back toward the editors in recent years. I look around and it seems like the true heyday of art directors being the strongest voice of not just one or two but many prominent magazines is past or at least dormant. I think art directors and designers alike are being reeled in. There is real hesitation or fear to challenge or push the reader too far. There seems to be a strong movement back to the standard magazine content lineup. Hit them with a bunch of ads. Then give them 20 or 30 pages of light fare, short bits, and new gadgets, sneakers and watches. A few nice sized articles, then the big feature. Mix in some more ads, hit them with some more small stuff and call it a day. The proven money making formula. And within this blueprint it can be hard to design something truly groundbreaking.

Not that it can’t be done. Jeremy, you mentioned Monocle, Tyler Brûlé’s newest publishing venture. His smarter, deeper version Wallpaper*. When I picked up the premiere issue I was initially drawn to the more typical Wallpaper* fare, small bits on design, fashion, books, art, urban lifestyle, etc. Brûlé has always done this well. But I found the attempts at meatier content paled in comparison. There was lots of it but it lacked the depth of journalism that felt necessary to raise the publication above being just another style mag. But I kept going back to it and realized that it was actually a very smart concept. Monocle is basically the world’s most stylish bathroom magazine, excellent fodder for a prolonged visit to the can or a short business class flight from Paris to Berlin. I am now a fan editorially. My boredom with the mag lies in its very nice design. The look is so grid based, so thorough, so devoid of spontaneity that after 4 or 5 issues of the same, the desire to fork over $12 Cdn for issue six just isn’t very strong. I think editors and publishers need to remember that people like spontaneity, and surprise in their lives — and in their magazines.
Basically, editors need to accept the fact that — like we’ve touched on — design has become content. Readers look for it and should expect design content change from issue to issue beyond new photos and spot illustrations.
————–
Neil: I couldn’t agree with you more about design being content or about the safety and traditionalism creeping into magazines today, but I have to tell you, I’ve gotten more resistance from designers in the past six or seven years than I’ve gotten from publishers and editors. Maybe it’s just a reaction against the 1990s, but the resistance to variable typefaces, revisionist reworkings of the structure of short bits, 750 word articles, 1,500 word articles, short bits, jump copy and a closing page and the built-in element of surprise from art directors whose work I’ve admired has been pretty shocking to me. If design is content, if fonts convey emotions and if synergy between word and image are true, and we know they are, this resistance from the people who could gain the most from strutting their stuff substantively is mystifying to me.

It may be the one place, oddly, where you see no 1990s nostalgia. Someone showed me a young adult book called So Yesterday that had a lead character, a girl who wanted, to the amazement of her friends, to work in magazines. She talked about a magazine that was clearly RayGun, and how it had crazy fonts and messed with things. Her friends thought she was kidding, but she just shrugged off their reactions, saying that people back then thought it was cool. It has made me want to come up with a start up that would hit the same mark today that RayGun did then, just to see what the response would be like.

It’s funny about Monocle. I remember trying to hit a minimal tone after David and I stopped working together. I wasn’t really successful. Then someone brought me the Wallpaper* prototype. My mouth dropped because it was so cool. Then, wanting to be the guy on the cover, I went out and bought a cool little house, just because it motivated me to. I wanted to love the new one and did think it was really smart, but that was a pale imitation of the web.

Maybe it’s because, however true the bathroom factor is, I can’t bring myself to think I’ve spent my life giving people something to read while they’re taking a dump! And the $12 price tag — that’s just outrageous, I think.

Sad to say, I have never heard of the magazines like Carl*s Cars and Fantastic Man you guys reference. The Museum newsstand that I used to see all these titles at closed due, ironically, to gentrification in my neighborhood, so it’s all I can do to get a copy of ReadyMade from time to time. I think the lack of retail outlets is another reason it’s harder to find the more offbeat, smaller titles unless you make a concerted effort to find them.
————–
Bill: I think it’s natural to have a reaction against the near past. Hey, without that kind of of rebellion, Punk never would have gotten off the ground. We’d still all be listening to Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer. There was even a revolt happening against the early RayGun with the later RayGun with Chris Ashworth at the design helm. His work on the mag was surely not as whimsical, personal, and groundbreaking as Carson’s, but overall I liked his typographic sensibility much better.
————–
Jeremy: Well straight off, there’s one of the great things the internet has done for magazines. You can discover all sorts of cool mags online and buy them/subscribe. Many have their own site, however elementary, and there are other resources – cue plug – such as my magCulture blog and the Colophon site. The web has revolutionized the distribution and sharing of knowledge about small magazines. Magazines that once had no hope of reaching an international audience now can. Not a massive worldwide sale, but random global interest and influence.

I’m often asked about the state of magazine design today and my answer is this: there are more magazines than ever and overall they do look better. Overall. Generally. Most are better designed than similar titles twenty years ago – the computer and InDesign have seen to that. There is less absolute rubbish around. Which does remove a certain spontaneity I guess. But there remain the exceptions, and they stick out as ever. I’ve already listed some; others include free mags like Vice, customer magazines like Carlos, 33 thoughts and m-real (another plug, sorry) plus newspaper magazines like the New York Times magazines. Yes, all free, all off the newsstand. The newsstand is not a healthy place in terms of surprise and innovation right now (everyone’s scared of failure, too much is at risk these days) but again there are exceptions: New York, Dwell, Wired, and Good to name a few in your country, Neil. All well-designed, and although reliant on the yuppy dollar as you say, how has any magazine worked financially without ads and sales and commercial relationships with advertisers, prs and marketeers?

There is a danger that we get all gooey and nostalgic for a golden age, but when was that age? There is an accepted chain of “great” magazines through publishing history, a canon that starts perhaps with Alexey Brodovitch and Harpers, moves through various sixties titles (Nova, Rolling Stone) to the seventies (??), eighties (The Face, i-d) the nineties (RayGun, Wallpaper). But all the while these titles were being published, loads and loads of relatively inadequate magazines were out there too that sold well. Plus a healthy sideline of indie magazines. There’s always been just a few major peaks sticking up above a mass of ok-ness

What’s next in the timeline? Always hard to know but right now Monocle is one contender. Yes its design is plain and simple, although very complex, but that’s a very deliberate tilt at the mass market multi-coloured screaming that passes as normal on the newsstand.

In this respect it’s as much a statement as RayGun was in it’s time. Next!
————–
Bill: As much a statement as RayGun was in its time? To make you feel at home Jeremy, Bollocks!! RayGun, although by no means the only project of its day experimenting with a thoroughly deconstructed, break-all-the-rules, style of design in the magazine world, it was the first project to successfully break it through to a quasi mass market audience. In doing so, it did, for good or bad (looking back mostly bad) cause a short lived revolution in the design world with the spirit of that revolution still being felt today. Like I said, I like the look of Monocle with its classic throwback look and sophisticated (I’d like to see even more sophistication) typographic design, tiny photo treatments, and its movement away from using traditional spreads. But this approach really has been done a million times, mostly in book form. Monocle seems almost based on old 70’s encyclopedia sets. And like with a set of encyclopedias where volume a is designed just like volume xyz except for the swapping of photos of ant eaters and apples for photos of xylophones and zebras, there just aren’t enough clever little twists and surprises happening to keep me coming back. So I think the “Monocle” approach works well for a one-off but in the long run I need more to satisfy my design tooth. I’m not asking for a complete redesign every issue, just a little twist here and there. A little whimsy. But I do dig Monocle, don’t get me wrong. I love the small size just like some of my all-time favourite magazines National Geographic and Mad.
————–
Jeremy: To clarify, I don’t think Monocle is a perfect design any more than you thought RayGun one. Monocle certainly needs more pace and variation across a single issue let alone issue by issue in my view. But while RayGun turned the heads of several generations of design students and made sloppy design passable, it was as much a singular styling as Monocle, with very little of it lasting the passing of time. It was also arguably highly derivative of earlier magazines from futurist/dada experiments through to early Moira Bogue’s eighties i-d. Carson had a naive schtick which stood him well for a couple of years but it was ultimately just a dare – how illegible can I make this text? Once or twice it was stunning, and conceptually it was great.

Which is, I suspect, how we’ll one day look back at Monocle.
————–
Neil: As much as I have my problems with RayGun as a piece of work, I can’t say that Monocle is in the same league. Unless I am missing something, Monocle, at least in my world, hasn’t made a ripple. I’ve never heard it referenced in meetings; I’ve never seen it in a designer’s office; and I don’t think it really subverts anything.
One of the reasons I left RayGun so early was that while I thought our work with Beach Culture had been spectacular from a conceptual point of view, RayGun seemed derivative (of our own work) and was just grandstanding at the expense of substance. That’s why I think David’s best design work occurred before RayGun, when he was a true visionary. After that, he became, at least for me, a victim of his own success.

As Neville Brody, who I am so sorry I never got to meet or work with, once said, and I’m paraphrasing here, when the only thing you can read on a page is the designer’s name, you know something is off. There were a number of reasons I quit RayGun in the middle of the fifth issue, but the idea that I was collaborating on “the end of print” at the expense of writers and, I thought, conceptual design was high on the list.

Still, while it lasted, it was a pretty great ride. And, to return to a theme you may be tired of, I don’t see that the zeitgeist makes that sort of ride possible today. After you guys’ comments yesterday, I started thinking about two u.s. magazines that I had high hopes for, Good and Heeb.

Good, which has an unlimited war chest, stems from the best possible intentions and has a massively important imperative, is a magazine I wanted to love. At first, I thought the art direction in the statistics section was brilliant and a contemporary heir to RayGun, Colors and the redesign of Details some seven or eight years ago. But when I sat down to read those pages, I realized that I was spending more time admiring the design and trying to figure out what the statistics actually are than the factoid was worth. That stuff worked in 1995, when you wanted to force the reader to spend lots of time deciphering the message (if only to cut down on newsstand browsing at the loss of a sale). These days, it is just self-indulgent. It doesn’t help that the magazine itself has predictable, very stiff editorial and, once you leave those “art pages”, indifferent design.

Heeb to me, as an urban, arty Jew, is even more interesting. It has done an excellent job, I think, of carving out a unique and effective targeted message. I love their impulses, if not the design of the magazine. But I’ve heard only one person over the past two years reference the magazine, and not one of my Jewish friends, who are in direct alignment with the magazine’s soul, have been interested enough to read it. They’re too busy buying video games and dvds, because they don’t expect to find themselves reflected in such a personal way in a magazine. I lived for that, but these people, who mostly are between 25 and 35, don’t. I cannot tell you how sad that makes me, because I still believe I have one great magazine left in me but while I’m all dressed up, there’s nowhere to go.
That’s why I respect people who do interesting magazines like ReadyMade or, without trying to embarrass Bill, Coupe. He won’t tell you, but when Coupe first crossed my desk, I sent him any number of fan letters because I loved what he was doing.
————–
Bill: Thanks Neil. It’s interesting the magazines you mentioned because each one initially grabbed my attention. I remember seeing Heeb on the rack for the first time and thinking “hmm, what are these guys up to?” I loved the title and concept and expected big things. I think whenever you’re dealing with a niche audience, theirs being hipster urban Jews, and magazine junkies, it’s a great opportunity to have a lot of fun. And they seemed to be having it. Although I admit it didn’t take off like I thought it might. Same thing with Good. The first issue really stood out with the all type cover treatment and big bold like you give a damn lettering. I think they’ve done a great job with Good and it does seem to have found a loyal audience, but again, the initial excitement seemed short lived. And, as we’ve all suggested, maybe this is just the time we live in. Everything seems short lived and phenomenons are very few and far between. I doubt very much there will ever be another film like Star Wars.

So many new magazines such as Good and Monocle seem to be emulating the web experience and many other magazines appear to be moving closer and closer to being web oriented rather than print oriented. And even hugely successful established mags like Maxim and tv Guide have made the total move to “online publication”. Maybe this is truly the end of print in magazine form. Then again maybe it’s the beginning of a new golden era of personal micro mags, magazines with concepts and and visuals and mandates that could never be fully recreated and experienced online. The magazine racks could some day be filled with great visual and editorial creations not hindered by consumerism and dependent on ad dollars and grant money for survival. A magazine world with more in common with the worlds of comic books and music and art than its current reality. And maybe, just maybe, these publications could lose the stigma of being considered quasi self-promotional pieces. That would be good.
————–
Neil: Amen to that last comment. Or, as Heeb should or would have said, “From your mouth to God’s ear.”
————–
Jeremy: I often get asked to speak about magazines and I find no shortage of interesting examples to show and discuss. People are surprised how “magazine” can mean so much more than the average tv listings guide or celebrity weekly. Titles such as Coupe — I’m a fan, too, just to embarrass you further, Bill — do the magazine thing in a far more interesting way than the establishment. So what if tv Guide has gone online? It’s cheaper, faster, more convenient and better for the environment. Win win win. But other situations require print. If you want to interact with Diane Arbus’ photography, what better than a beautifully produced and finished hardback book? This isn’t intended as a comment on low and high art, just an acknowledgment that both print and online have their places. Maybe one day magazines will disappear but I think it will be a more serious event than the internet that brings that end on — global warming, the end of oil, etc.
————–
Neil: I think the general thrust is that yes, there will always be magazines, some of which are great and cool, personal and vital, but the fragmentation that has become pervasive, along with the Internet, makes it more difficult to make the kind of impact (or enjoy the financial remuneration) a magazine like RayGun, which came out of nowhere, had, for better or for worse. I’m glad I got in under the gun, so to speak. And, as much as I hate to admit it, even knowing how harsh economic realities are, I would jump at the chance to do the right magazine again because other than books, nothing is quite as satisfying as holding that issue in your hands when it comes off the press, knowing you did a good job. That may be cheesy but damn if it ain’t the truth!