Clever ideas

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Two big announcements

August 4, 2011 in Clever ideas, Personal promotion, technology | 3 comments

So here’s something: I have a new job. And a new ebook out. The two might be connected.

The job: The image above might be a clue. Yes, from this coming Monday, I will be the Books Editor of The Huffington Post.

I’m excited. I’ve never worked full time for a major brand before. This one is, unusually in this climate, both ambitious and expanding. There’s some fascinating things that can be done in the area of online reporting and aggregation. I hope, nay expect, to be doing some of them. Give me a few weeks to get used to things, but watch this space.

The book: Somewhat fortuitously, this morning my new ebook, Reading in Four Dimensions, went live on Kindle (here’s the UK link) and Nook. People can read it via pretty much any device via the free Kindle and Nook apps.

The book – well, long essay really – looks at how the physical and digital worlds interact through the medium of storytelling. It’s an explanation of social reading, and why it’s going to change publishing. It’s a story about time travel. And it’s only 99c (or its equivalent in your territory.) There’s also a page of related links.

If you’d like to know more, below are a few Probably Asked Questions.

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Today, I’m mostly surrounded by debt

July 30, 2011 in Clever ideas, Death of print, Personal promotion | No comments

DEBT from Dustin Grella on Vimeo.

I’m spending today/night/morrow helping out on Longshot, the 48-hour magazine that I like to think of Stranded‘s more famous half-brother.

The theme of this issue is Debt, and there are five simple challenges you can complete to participate here. Be quick though, the clock is ticking…

News from the Magosphere April 19th ’11

April 19, 2011 in Clever ideas, Death of print, Fashion, ipad, Magazine covers, Maglets, New launches, News round-up, USA | No comments

Much to catch up on, so just this once, I’ve divided this feature into categories

News

Woodwing makes its format an open standard
It’s a risky strategy, but I suspect they’re losing ground to Adobe’s InDesign plugin feature. Meantime, GQ 2.0 shows what can be done with the new Adobe system. Seems like an important step forward (though still a long way to go)

New Lineread POD magazine features a decade roundup
Also features me writing about this blog. Worth the price alone, I should think

New edition of Kilimanjaro out
Since the demise of Is/Not, it’s probably the biggest magazine currently being made. Looks like the latest one spoofs Fantastic Man

Newsweek only has six ads
Though given the way ads are booked, this is actually an indictment of how poor the previous product was, not the relaunch

Pay what you want seems to work for pre-launch niche sports mag
Also contains some great writing about football (aka soccer)

Huge augmented reality spread aimed at Nintendo 3DS users
I’m not generally a fan, but in this context AR makes a bit more sense

Dumbo Feather, Pass it On passes the feather to a new team, new design
I’ve always been fond of this Aussie mag. Great to see it evolving

Founder of Tiger Beat dies
The NYT has a slideshow of the magazine’s history, most notable for demonstrating how many cover lines can fit in a small space

A magazine goes online, signs off print with this cover
Nice sense of history

Mag love

Roundup of great Bloomberg Businessweek feature designs
That man Turley, he’s something special. And only 34 years old, too

How to make an Argentinian poster magazine
Documentary about a graphic designer’s publication, which was created as a response to his country’s financial troubles

Hand-stitched Vogue covers
Really very lovely

Stack and Magculture team up to host The Magazine Club Printout!
Rumours of a potential New York version run by me may or may not be accurate

Every cover of Time magazine
Could every magazine now do this, and keep it updated? Cheersthanksloveyoubye

The Economist to halt production for a month
I kind of want this to be true

New magazines

Dust magazine launches
Yet another fashion/art publication. This one *might* be different…

Boat magazine travels to overlooked places
The name doesn’t do them any favours, and there’s a danger of the high concept sliding into cultural tourism, but the spreads on show look great

Timbuktu is a kids’ mag on the iPad
Looks like what Anorak would make if they weren’t busy getting distribution in the USA and then going grown up in their spare time

I really like the look of Buffalo‘s design
Love how they take advantage of the large format to place a smaller mag template on the page

Total flashbacks

April 7, 2011 in Clever ideas, Magazine covers | No comments

I’ve been busy with a number of other projects, but have a huge pile of maglicious goodies to share with you soon. Meantime, this is something too lovely not to highlight:

This month’s Total Film main cover (above) might be a bit generic, but hidden underneath is one of three well-made classic magazine pastiches, all lovely. They’re themed around the prequel’s 1960s setting.

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Some lovely recent cover work

March 16, 2011 in Clever ideas, Magazine covers | 4 comments

You can expect at least some of these to return in my top ten of 2011.

This is a jobs supplement from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, aimed at school-leavers. Kati Krause translates it thusly:

Crossed-out text: “How are you going to live. How do you make the right decisions? Will your relationship survive leaving school? You don’t have an idea what you want to be either? Are you too much of a coward to get started in your dream job? How do you tie a tie? Is it ok to be Facebook friends with one’s teacher? What do you have to know to live in a shared flat?”

Circled text: “You decide what you want. Start with joy.”

I like this very much. Their fashion-literate readership will instantly recognise the mouth (just in case you don’t), and there’s a good, feature-led reason to draw attention to it. Add in the bright, unusual colours, and you have a lovely Rocky Horror/Samuel Beckett tribute cover.

Colourful geometric pattern made personal.

Just the right sense of urban recklessness for Vice‘s readership.

Little White Lies continues to experiment while remaining true to their basic, successful cover aesthetic. I hope they never lead with a photograph.

Most if not all have come via either Cover Junkie, Nas Capas, Newmanology or Magculture – all of which are highly recommended.

Finally, two image-led bonus links:

The above photo by Richard Avedon was the first full-page picture ever to appear in the New Yorker, in 1992. I learned this while reading about how the New Yorker is saying goodbye to its talented Visuals Editor Elisabeth Biondi with tributes by some of their contributors/staff. (She’s not dead, just moving on.) There’s also a great interview with her here about her history and philosophy.

This is the greatest magazine rejection letter I’ve seen. (Source; thanks Kate.)

News from the Magosphere March 14th ’11

March 14, 2011 in Archives, Buzzwords, Clever ideas, Death of print, Magazine covers, News round-up | No comments

Australian design magazine redesigns
Looks interesting – wish its international distribution was redesigned also. Speaking of which…

Graphic design magazines of the world
…unite! Michael Bojkowski, art director of Grafik, is writing up a series of excellent summaries of others in their field. Perhaps an interesting international content exchange of sorts could be arranged?

Subscribers don’t like magazine going online only
I’m sure there are sound financial reasons for not offering the option of a refund – and instead asking subscribers to give more for the privilege – but in PR terms, it does seem to have been handled poorly

The best and worst selling covers from 2010
Kate Middleton comes out pretty badly from this

Seven years of The Nation covers
Fiddly navigation aside, this site from designer Stephen Kling contains inside stories, rejected covers and a lot of sharp political cover satire. Hit “Table of Contents” for further tales (via Unbeige)

101 Ways to read the New York Times
Well, almost. Such is the power of diversification

Seven ways magazines are using social media
Not as witless as some of the articles on this topic

Emphas.is launches in beta to crowdfund important photojournalism
Part Kickstarter, part lobbying group, part community forum, it has an amazing board of reviewers, including many top magazines represented. I also love that anyone who funds 50% of a project gets first refusal rights on publishing the result (with the photographer’s approval)

This is the best time to be in magazines!
He’s right, though it’s certainly not the best time to be a publisher

Egoïste returns
Four years since the last one, and as heavy as it ever was (thanks Kati)

If you haven’t got a correspondent…
Call a phone box. Lovely sideways piece of thinking by the SZ magazine

JPG brings in a famous guest curator
Great concept that fits the mag well. Unfortunately, the online preview of the issue only features one photo from the set he chose

Archive magazines online alongside yearbooks, newsreels and music
This kind of contextual linking is only going to get bigger. Can’t wait

Test drive a car on a print ad
Via a natty iPhone app and some smart thinking

How the Businessweek cloud cover came about
Always assuming it wasn’t a conceptual copy of this Italian newspaper supplement cover from January. Sidenote: I’m really enjoying Richard’s tumblrlog experiments

New York is placing archives and unused cover concepts on Flickr
There’s a lot to enjoy right there – you can also follow art director Chris Dixon on Twitter

What happened to the staff after the newspaper closed
They should illustrate and publish their survey via The Newspaper Club, for irony kicks

Videogame magazine nostalgia
Cos it’s not just about the pixels

News and magazines

March 7, 2011 in Clever ideas, Death of print | No comments

News magazines are the big news themselves today, with the new NYT magazine launching yesterday (I live tweeted my first impressions of each page on Sunday morning) and, entirely coincidentally I’m sure, the first issue of Tina Brown’s combined Newsweek/Daily Beast magazine appearing on newsstands today.

I’ll post more on both those two shortly, but first I’d like to highlight a really interesting-sounding creation by Chimurenga, which is a particularly creative pan-African magazine based in Cape Town that I’ve been a fan of since their excellent graphic novel issue.

The next Chimurenga project, working in collaboration with Nigeria’s Cassava Republic Press and Kenya’s Kwani?, is “a once-off, one-day-only edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present.”

The new creation promises to be “a multi-section broadsheet with news, long-form journalism, comics, sport, art etc. and 100-page books magazine to be released in September 2011, in numerous African cities. Back-dated to the week May 18-24 2008, it’s situated during the first week of the so-called xenophobic violence in South Africa, two years ago – but it focuses outward, covering the events, scenes and situations around the world during this period.”

And it’ll be distributed by newspaper sellers across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Southern Africa. You can read more about the concept on their hand-drawn dummy newspaper pages here.

Sounds fantastic – and they want your help. They want to turn the classifieds of their paper into a literary platform of its own. Learn how to participate here.

The medium of newsprint combined with deep thought and literary experimentation, with a more overtly political slant than the San Francisco Panorama, created and distributed in a region where newspapers remain the primary source of information? Can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

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