magRush2013: Mimik #1

Mimik is a new magazine that promises a different format every issue. The launch ‘White’ issue is an open-bound booklet within a large format fold-out poster.

Published from Utrecht in The Netherlands, it’s primarily a fashion magazine. Regular magCulture readers will know I glaze over when confronted with a fashion magazine, but this one stands out partly because it also features art, poetry and short stories (below). Nothing so new about that perhaps, but this additional content frees up Mimik to do something more than just run full-bleed fashion photographs. The magazine was previously an online publication, which explains its apparent editorial confidence in this first print edition.

The resulting busy-ness of the design on the relatively small page format (it’s a tidy 170 x 240mm) and matt paper give it a very different feel to the big glossy photo portfolios typical of the fashion shelves. Some of the content is pretty heavy – the theme White refers to desolation rather than the more obvious virginity – but the mix of content presents a coherent outlook around performance art, fashion and poetry.

And it looks great, art director Lars Zuidweg has worked hard to give the magazine an intelligent, bookish feel that is surprisingly flexible, leaving it feeling more magazine-like in the pace and variation of the individual layouts.

I look forward to seeing what a new theme and format lead to with issue two.