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Colophon curators make magazines!

Both my Colophon co-curators Andrew Losowsky and Mike Koedinger have launched new magazines recently. They share a desire to be international but go about that in different ways.

First up is Ling, the new customer magazine produced by Andrew’s le cool Publishing for Spain’s Vueling airline. Created in collaboration with Barcelona-based editorial design specialists Feriche Black, Ling is a nice take on the inflight magazine. It avoids the clichés of the genre, focusing instead on ‘people and their cities’, the cities, naturally, being those where Vueling fly.

So we get voxpops from Valancia; three florists from different cities record their day in pictures; a series of answers to the question ‘What do you want for your city?’; a picture report on Flamenco dancing in Tokyo. All quite lightweight but diverting, and presented in a deconstructed Carson-lite manner that perfectly suits the tempo and tone. Some great illustration along the way too. Overall it makes me feel good about Vueling as a brand, providing them with a veneer of cool without ever over-stepping the mark and becoming laughable. Even the random switching from Spanish to English text comes across as charming rather than irritating.

Mike Koedinger Edition’s newly re-launched Nico uses only English, but has international ambitions. A whopping 252 pages, it’s a heavyweight piece of publishing that combines interviews with designers, museum curators and artists with extensive fashion coverage. Published because ‘We deeply love magazines’, as Mike says in his intro, it’s a strong addition to the independent sector. It uses a simple, almost book-like design (one font in black and white), allowing the images to be the stars. (The cover, top, is actually a metallic silver that is impossible to shoot well).

The launch issue is rather Colophon-orientated (a good thing!), featuring extended interviews with the speakers and curators (including me :), plus fashion picks from magazines from the Colophon world including Carl*s Cars, S-magazine, Plastic Rhino and Kasino A4.

Fashion-wise there’s a strong fashion shoot from former M-publication editor Kimberley Lloyd featuring overprinting in gold (above), and a lengthy shoot by Turkish experimentalists docu:mentalKLINIK. This uses model-free images with extended, flowery captions describing what the model would look like if she/he were there. A clever conceit, extended by the final spread that shows the preparation (hair, make up etc) that an actual model went through before the shoot.

This first issue of Nico is a good launch, the Colophon material making a good case and context for the magazine’s existence. It’ll be interesting to see what issue two develops into.