January 2009

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Fabien Baron leaves Interview?

January 29, 2009 in News round-up | 1 comment

Scarcely a year after taking the thing over with editor Glenn O’Brien, Fabien has apparently thrown his toys out of the pram, and is taking his ball, aka collaborator and creative director Carl Templer, with him. If true, that’s quite a blow for the revamped mag, in losing its biggest name just a handful of issues into his redesign (though the monochrome template he’s left is pretty robust and will hold up for a couple of issues with a temporary replacement, if that’s what happens).

WWD has broken this story, with few details and even fewer mixed metaphors than me, over here.

UPDATE: WWD now reports that FB is leaving “to focus all [his] energy” on Baron and Baron, his client-work studio. Coming only two weeks after a change in publisher, all is presumably not well at the big I.

The same piece claims that M/M Paris have been tapped up to replace FB at the top – a reversal of what happened at French Vogue in 2003, when FB replaced M/M as creative consultant. Now I’m a big fan of M/M, particularly their work with Bjork and their fashion alphabet, but they do strike me as a rather obvious choice. Expect more monochrome and elaborate typography.

Jeremy feels the same way.

Building an independent media empire – exclusive interview

January 26, 2009 in interview | No comments

b20 publishing

“I guess I started a magazine because I knew almost nothing about print.”

It may not sound like the best time to buy an entire magazine, but that’s just what Lothar Eckstein has done. Twice.

The founder and editor-in-chief of sleek magazine, in November he bought two of his favourite independent magazines, Qvest and Luna, from German company Mediakom, to create a stable of three fashion magazines under the umbrella of B20 Publishing.

He talked exclusively to the Blogsplosion, sharing tales of independence, economies of scale and the future of magazine advertising.

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News from the Magosphere 23rd Jan ’09

January 23, 2009 in News round-up | No comments

Shortcovers to bring individual article purchase to the iPhone
Buried in this description of on-screen bookselling. I said that the whole ‘by article’ thing wouldn’t go away, though the iPhone screen isn’t the killer device that will make it a comfortable read

Vogue does torture-porn fashion shoot
Zzzzzzzzz

Polaroid’s old factory bought by Dutch fanboys
New film to be developed; seeks help from photographers, and will probably get it

Big names in British men’s magazines make their own arch fanzine
It’s fun. Some bits of it make me laugh, though others make me feel like I’m missing the in-joke. Which I almost certainly am

Top Gear presenter was fired for doing something funny with dropcaps
I completely missed this before. Full Flickr scans here

Italian doctorate on magazines includes interviews in English
Interviews with mag makers at the end. There’s plenty of pretty to illustrate the Italian text too

Variety likes The September Issue
Though montages grate a little, it seems, as does relentless self-publicity by all concerned

super/collider to screen high-definition moon footage
One of my favourite digital magazines, small as it is, presents its first live event in London

Crisis roundup

Google quits the print ads game
Was never really their forte, even in happier times

Home design magazines feeling the pinch
No surprises in this fairly typical doom-and-gloom story

Why magazines themselves aren’t doomed
Smart answer. Perhaps, perhaps the model is broken, but not the medium

Mygazines – exclusive interview

January 21, 2009 in interview, Opinion, technology, Trend | 9 comments

“Bottom line is, we didn’t handle it right. We took bad advice, and followed it.”

A quick summary: in July last year, a website called Mygazines launched. It allowed registered users to upload scans of any magazine, and then share them for free. Faster than you could say “copyright infringement”, the site had more than 130,000 registered users, and everything from The Economist to Time was being scanned and shared on the site.

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Obama’s People

January 18, 2009 in Clever ideas, USA | 2 comments

The New York Times magazine – on a good week, one of my favourite newspaper supplements – today published a deliberate echo of Rolling Stone‘s American bicentennial issue The Family from 1976, that featured 76 ‘Portraits of Power’ shot by Richard Avedon. (Not entirely coincidentally, Avedon’s photos are currently on display in a gallery in Washington DC.)

Where Avedon mixed politicians with models and counter-cultural icons, The NYT has gone just for members of the new Washington arrivals, under the heading of ‘Obama’s People’. And the images are reproduced in carefully corrected colour rather than black and white exactitude.

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Vogue: The Documentary

January 17, 2009 in News round-up, USA | 2 comments

On Thursday evening, The September Issue (whose tagline is the not-inaccurate “Fashion is a religion. This is its Bible.“) premiered in Salt Lake City as part of the Sundance Film Festival. It’s a documentary telling the story of the creation of the September 2007 issue of Vogue – a mammoth 840 page edition (of which 727 were ads).

I’ve only found one review so far, and it seems the film is about the battle between Anna Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington, a battle for humanity’s soul and the right to accessorise properly. All of which suggests bitchy, stress-filled office fun, especially for those either nosy or nostalgic for the days when magazines carried advertising – though it’ll probably be more of a busman’s holiday for many of us. Arthouse distribution seems almost guaranteed, especially if the vultures end up making Wintour angry enough to walk out.

Two minutes of short clips and the rather hairy director talking here:

News from the Magosphere 16th January ’09

January 16, 2009 in News round-up | 2 comments

Esquire puts a hole in Obama’s face
For $250,000, who wouldn’t? There could be some neat creative solutions made using this alongside the cover image in the future, like a Mad magazine-style trapdoor; though knowing Esquire US, there won’t be. A pull tab for BMW is to follow. “I think you can smell a gimmick a mile away,” says the VP of Discovery channel. I’m sniffing one from here

Papercamp highlights the future of tech and paper
Less gimmicky, more geeky. Originated by Dopplr’s Matt Jones; some of the ideas can be seen here. There’s a New York-flavoured edition coming up next month

Ads in PDFs scrapped by Adobe
Between them, Techcrunch and Nxtbook have it about right. However, I’m not convinced by the phrase “A true digital magazine is designed to be an elegant reading experience. While some are better than others, most all are more engaging than the PDF format” – PDF Mags begs to differ

Taschen’s London store gears up for a warehouse sale
Takes place on 23-25th January. Plenty of pulp mag books with slightly scuffed covers on offer on day one, fewer bargains by the weekend I’ll bet

Adbusting protests against Photoshop use
Fabulous in-joke fun

And the obligatory crisis roundup:

Jeans brand scraps magazine advertising
“Magazines will always be relevant. We are just trying something new this season.” And cheaper. Goes instead for marketing on its own website and instore

Arthur goes into hibernation
The community funding only postponed the end. The blog has been busy since, though. If you prefer a fictional version of this story…

…Bad Idea creates miniseries about print and the money pit
Occasionally amusing. “How about Kabuki theatre for the disabled?”

Funniest line of the magazine crisis so far
Though I’m not sure it’s true. But who cares?

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