Magazines are dead. Long live magazines

Complex magazine has posted a rather wonderful and impressively comprehensive look at 48 Dead Rap Magazines on its website, including scans of covers and readable inside pages apparently gathered from the collection of “Ted Bawno” (actually the name of Ego Trip’s fictional bigoted white owner, who lives on on Twitter).

On the site, which was apparently created in honour of the passing of Vibe, Complex describes the magazines, rates them, explains what they meant and says why they died. It could only really be improved upon with the addition of a forum for each magazine, to allow people to add their own scans/memories, and the option to suggest new additions. As it stands, it’s something of a model of how to present and remember deceased magazines.

Dead magazines have always stirred their own particular brand of nostalgia. Though the experience of regular closures is relatively new to the newspaper industry, magazines have always come and gone, leaving behind distraught fans and former employees to haphazardly guard their legacy. Although there are a few blogs that document the deceased, plus the occasional fansite, I haven’t come across anything before quite as detailed and thoughtful as this.

It seems to me that an incredibly useful (if inevitably uneven) online resource for editors, designers and nostalgics could be compiled from people’s memories and collections of dead magazines, perhaps with complete issues archived on Issuu (though there are obvious copyright issues that would currently prevent that; Quinta Tinta has made a start regardless, scanning and uploading the first two issues of Avant Garde).

At the first Colophon event in 2007, we created our own magazine graveyard in the basement, with wall plaques and tombstones representing the dearly departed (pictured above, photo by Eric Chenal). Much of the text from that exhibition was reproduced in the chapter “Your Subscription Has Been Cancelled” in We Love Magazines. During the event, someone taped a flower to the Emigre tombstone; I suspect that, if we’d thought to sell roses at the event, there would have been many more scattered throughout.

I’ve just been sent an interview by a popular Spanish-language design blog, in which the final question is “What is the best magazine that no longer exists?”. I have my own thoughts; your own answers, however, are very welcome. May they rest in peace.