Review: MyMag, part 1, AOKI

Over the next three few days, I’m going to do something a little different.

Three unusual new publications were recently released simultaneously, under the banner of MyMag, all promising to reinvigorate interest in print magazines.

Each MyMag has a different guest editor, each invited to create “a personalized magazine devoted to their passions, interests and diversions.” The magazines contain a mixture of unique content, and spreads reproduced from other magazines’ archives – sort of like an individually curated Distill.

Few people will buy all three MyMags. You can’t even buy a MyMag subscription. Instead, each magazine aims to capitalize on the individual fan bases of each guest ‘tastemaker’ – so spreading the risk between them.

The first three MyMags are called AOKI (for LA-based DJ Steve Aoki, aka Kid Millionaire), Hey Olivia! (model/cable TV presenter Olivia Munn) and RatMag (Hollywood director Brett Ratner). I’m going to review each of them, one a day. Then over the weekend, I’ll post a Magtastic exclusive interview with the man behind the whole thing, former luxury magazine publisher Magnus Greaves.

So let’s get on with it.

AOKI’s opening pages are very magenta-on-monochrome, and it’s a good choice, matching the vibrancy of its eponymous editor. As with each MyMag, it starts with a contents page, followed by an editor’s letter. AOKI’s letter talks about making his first fanzine, aged 16, gluing pages, adding writing from his journal, and then Xeroxing the whole thing.

There’s something of that DIY aesthetic in the opening to his magazine. It contains 16 pages of exclusive gig photos of Steve himself, taken by Cobra Snake. No words, and none really needed – the wildness of the nights suggests that not many memories would have been forthcoming anyway. As a piece of fan memorabilia, so far, so good.

Then we get to the magazines, each one introduced by a handwritten note from Steve about his choice. The first one is NYLON, “THE definitive fashion magazine for the youth.” AOKI’s own cover, with its bright magenta and stark all-caps logo, is clearly nodding to this choice.

The pages have been scaled to fit the format, with bright CMYK backgrounds that counter NYLON’s often white-dominated pages. Page numbers have mostly been left intact – which is a great touch, and helps explain the jumps in narrative flow. With nine music-themed spreads from NYLON, we are given ample time to get accustomed to the magazine and its style.

Next up is bpm, “the number one magazine for DJs”. I can’t decide if this is a fascinating insight into the niche reads of the man, or if he’s showcasing a magazine that 90% of his audience will probably already buy.

Either way, the choice of issue is a deliberate one – featuring Aoki himself on the cover, profiled in one of the pages, and featured in some of the party photos. Though many of the articles aren’t about him but rather the scene within which he lives, it feels somehow at odds with the stated high concept – that all of the content was chosen by the guest editor. If true, then this could be seen either as trying to keep the fans happy, or as purely egotistical.

As the other two MyMags also suffer from this confusion, where the guest editor suddenly pops up, Zelig-like, within their magazine choices, perhaps we should consider it a deliberate publishing choice. Still, it jars with the idea that these pieces were chosen as the guest editor’s favourite articles (or it makes you like them a lot less for being so self-centred).

One of the things that Aoki mentions about V magazine is that “it’s HUGE”. And so its pages are somewhat diminished in the standard-format AOKI. Still, the chosen spreads – an interview with Gisele and then some classical black-and-whites, and a couple of less conventional fashion shoots, change the pace well enough from the energy of bpm.

Finally, we get Monster Children, a old favourite of mine from Australia. Unfortunately, it’s another unusual format that loses even more in the conversion. The original magazine is more like a standard mag turned sideways. What we get in AOKI is the magazine scaled down to fit the pages, leading to uncomfortably small text, just about readable but not pleasant to do so. And another appearance from Steve within its 18 chosen pages.

Each of the magazines has a sponsor. AOKI’s is Diesel, and it’s a good fit, the bright, party-style saturated photos of their current campaign matching the man pretty well. They get a few inside spreads, and the back page. Elsewhere in the mag, all the other ads are for ventures of Aoki’s.

Oh and there’s some small stickers inside too.

I know that I’m not the intended audience – I didn’t know Steve Aoki beforehand, though I did come out of AOKI rather liking the man. However, the magazine that bears his name certainly doesn’t come across as a fanzine made by him, so much as a handful of photographs and magazines taken from his luggage.

His connection to the magazines – does he subscribe? How long has he been reading them? What else does he read? – isn’t really explained beyond a generic one-line intro, and so don’t really provide much of a window into his psyche. Strangely, you have to go to the MyMag blog for that level of insight.

I’m also not sure it works to put all the unique content first, followed by the syndicated spreads – it’s an abrupt jump, where mixing the two might have felt more natural. And the odd juxtaposition of clippings featuring him, and clippings chosen by him, is definitely something of a distraction.

Overall, you’d probably have to be a pretty hardcore Aoki fan to make AOKI a worthwhile purchase – and if you are, it almost certainly won’t tell you anything you don’t already know. But then, you probably won’t care. And unlike most memorabilia, at least it’s well designed and put together.

Tomorrow: Hey Olivia!