News round-up

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Grafik has a new cover concept
Some nice possibilities with this one

Renting an apartment for your Playboy collection
Confessions of a female centerfold obsessive

Jeremy redesigns FHM UK
Gives it a much more clearly delineated structure. He also kindly gives Magtastic Blogsplosion a shout out here, where he says that most of his links come from Twitter these days. Should I start tweeting?

Gute Seiten has a lovely round up of small, new magazines
Palimpsest in particular sounds intriguing

How W art director matches headlines to photography
I think Klaus/Haus is my favourite. It’s not much more than you could get from just looking at the magazine, but a useful primer for graphic design students. Nicely shot, too

Unusual guidebook/magazine hybrid launches
Looks intriguing, though am not sure who its audience will be

Melbourne e-magazine Three Thousand opens up a store
Includes rare zines and magazines

Becky Smith’s top five mags of all time
Classics are thus for a reason

In-jokes in magazine design part 351
What’s important is that it still has relevance and power, whether you get the reference or not. Don’t think Paste passes that test

New online design magazine launches issue zero
Editorial method includes open monthly meetings in NYC to determine content. Disclosure: I’m an advisor on the project. Many are the plans and improvements to come

iPad overexcitement roundup

Google may be working on a bigger tablet
Or might just be employing animators to get a cheap headline. Slightly confused by the line “Several other consumer electronics companies, including HP, are thought to be working on their own tablet-style computers.” The article is dated 2nd Feb – nearly a month after the same newspaper already reported on the HP Slate

Interview the latest to unveil prototype iPad video
It looks quite nice, though doesn’t explain how the user knows when something is part of a spread or a single page

iPad UI conventions
How Apple seems to think we might design for it

Fewer updates this week as I’m out of town giving a talk here. However, one of the great things about European layovers in unexpected locations is the ability to kill time in a nearby Relay.

As I flew Lufthansa, I got a stop in Frankfurt. There were three Relays within about 500 feet of each other, all of which had a remarkable selection of magazines. It was good to see independents such as Kaiserin and S(nsfw) sitting alongside the usual fare. Here’s what else I spotted, and snapped with my iPhone:

Business magazine Brand Eins continues to stand out for its beautiful simplicity.

Sleek is doing something lovely with the page edges in their latest issue, themed ‘Food’. You can download it for free if you register here.

Swiss design mag idPure is always worth looking at. They’ve had a redesign of their cover since I last saw it. I like it a lot.

The first issue of Business Punk, the new G+J magazine that tries to meld economics and ladmags, was there. Lots of bright colours and shouty design about the most unexpected topics inside. However, I wasn’t able to find its stablemate, leaving me asking ‘Where’s the Beef?’

At least two charities have their own newsstand titles, both cleanly designed and filled with more content than just money-raising fayre.

And finally, a piece of honest explanation for the store’s top shelf. It was 6am, I was surrounded by wide-eyed people who, like me, had taken overnight flights, and yet I was in a happy place. Yes, I am a cheap date.

Spin starts licensing their archive content
The lesson for magazines here is never, ever throw anything away. Meanwhile…

Conde Nast suddenly realises that brands have value beyond print
“Guys! I’ve got a brilliant idea!”

New magazine launches for mega-rich athletes
As long as Jamie Redknapp isn’t on the editorial board

Girls Like Us is back!
Brilliantly named, trendy Euro-lesbian mag returns with a smart new look

Paste survives with unusual content-sharing deal
We might start to see a lot more of this kind of thing. (Previously)

Esquire’s moving cover
It’s a simple trick, but it still kinda freaks me out

Creative Review offers subscribers free tomatoes and a planter
Includes prize for the best tomatoes (see comments). Part of their rather fabulous series experimenting with biodegradable packaging

PDF magazine gets David Foster Wallace exclusive
Requires free subscription, but it’s well worth the hassle – and it’s a lovely mag anyway. Also still the only PDF mag I know that’s designed to be printed out on normal printer paper before reading

Limited-edition Emigre prints for sale
Really pretty combinations of previous front pages. Shame they’re so expensive

New Feltron Report prepares to launch
Every year, Nicholas Felton releases his limited edition, infographically gorgeous Annual Report. This year’s is twice the price of last year’s – and is a 16-page, four-colour extravaganza. Almost guaranteed to be worth it

Cartoonist annotates each week’s Guardian Weekender magazine
They should commission him to do it for real one week

Tablets can’t save magazines
The backlash has already begun. And they both make good points. Right now, the industry is focused on making payment possible. But will enough readers want to do so? (via Bob Newman)

Magazine Magazine to launch
Except it already exists

Archive of underground classic International Times available online
Not new, but I finally caught up with it. Contains some fantastic experiments with design on newsprint – future Newspaper Clubbers take note. Speaking of underground magazines…

“That’s what the world needs now – love, sweet love, and a good underground magazine”
Cult hero and graphic novel writer Alan Moore launches his own print magazine, Dodgem Logic. Click around the website, there’s plenty of surprises tucked away in the corners

Oz trial to be made into a film
I wonder if it’ll include Felix Dennis killing someone?

Men’s Health recycles cover lines from 2007
Apparently the subscriber cover lines are different, which seems a strange incentive to offer. UPDATE: Gawker points out that they’ve been doing it for years

Paste presents the 20 best (American) magazines of the decade
Mostly predictable, generally disappointing

The first issue
Worth it just for that inter/view cover. “First issue collector’s edition” indeed

Marie Claire to launch a fashion magazine aimed at women in their 30s
Envy to hit French newsstands early next year

A decent summary of all this e-magazine kerfuffle
My thoughts already over here, if you have a few minutes spare

Great covers, made cheaply
Love the Disney one

Style magazines in Sub-Saharan Africa (requires login)
During a trip to Nigeria this summer, I picked up a copy of the women’s magazine True Love. I’ll post a review at some point

T-post celebrates with freebies and lesbians
A press release entirely designed with SEO in mind

austin kleon poetry

Newspaper supplement launches reader campaign
El País Semanal is the Sunday magazine that comes free with El País newspaper in Spain – and a major reason why people buy the Sunday paper. It’s actually very good (if a little thin), at times reminiscent of the heyday of the Sunday Times Magazine in the UK. “Yo leo” means “I read”, and that’s what the TV spots and the website focus on. The site also includes reader-made covers, some of which are really quite good. Can magazines help save newspapers? The Times certainly hopes so

Grazia launches fashion range
Brand extensions keep on running. Whereas the InStyler might want to change its name/logo to avoid a lawsuit

File magazine comes with three hours of free watching
Looks rather good

Wallpaper* makes region-specific covers
Collect them all to spell out the headline. Here’s the missing one from that image. Bonus link: meet the team at an EDO event soon

Men’s Health editors really kind of shy
They should probably be a bit more confident about their industry-leading product

Acido Surtido gets a making-of documentary
The link goes to the trailer. It couldn’t happen to a nicer Argentinean poster magazine. Caution: contains We Make Magazines

How Paper (not paper) keeps going
A former poster magazine themselves, the event-planning/trendcasting company might just be the key

A bomb in every issue
A new book remembers Ramparts, a classic independent American politics magazine (requires registration). Bonus links: roundup of some Ramparts designs, The Fanzine Scene is alive and kicking in the UK

November: when cover lines aren’t needed
Don’t things look nicer without them?

Contraswap lets magazines advertise with each other
Created by one of the owners of Grafik, it seems rather well thought out

5 ways to save magazines!
Alternatively, magazines don’t need saving with gimmicks. I’m with Rex on this one

The living magazine!
A very expensive way of showing the same old thing again, without addressing the same vital questions: how and why will disposable screens be made cost effective and environmentally sound? None of the technology examples they show are designed to be used once and then thrown away. And you thought glossy paper was bad. Bonus link: Will we see a Time/Conde Nast/Hearst e-reader soon? My guess? Probably. And it will fail

We’ll take your leftovers!
Eater blog offers to buy unpublished Gourmet stories. I agree to the sentiment of this piece – it’s kind of sad to see Versailles crumble. Bonus links: Gourmet cover archive, great food magazines are alive and well

Tar magazine “on hold”
Having its founder named as Interview’s editor in chief might have put a dampener on things. Still, it’s yet to make the In Memoriam wall

The Economist strategy – revealed
Nothing too revelatory, but an interesting read

New Statesman cover morphs Obama and Bush
Now an old visual gag, last seen during the election. First record I can find of it used with two politicians like that is Michael Moore’s music video for Rage Against The Machine’s Testify. Anyone know of earlier?

Artist turns New York Times into poetry using only a Sharpie
Lovely. He has a book of them coming out next year

Diesel invites top fashion magazines to make t-shirts
Unfortunately, they were asked simply to choose an old cover, so the results aren’t special

Life back issues now available on Google
They did it before for the images – now the actual pages from 1936-1972, including the ads, are online. It’s ok for historical research, they’ve embedded links into each contents page, and I like the “places mentioned in this magazine” map, but otherwise Google’s book viewer isn’t suited to magazines at all. The zoom isn’t good enough, especially when you switch to view spreads. A much better interface is needed if they’re going to make a habit of this

Elephant about to enter the room
Looks very good, as we’ve come to expect from Matt Wiley. I also really like the five-part structure. Can’t wait to see a copy

The Most Controversial Magazine Covers Of All Time
A mixed bag. Some are obvious – OJ’s darkened skin, Golfweek – but did people really protest over National Lampoon’s dog? Was Andy Warhol drowning in soup quite such a shocking statement? Discuss

French gallery creates large-format exhibition to coincide with magazine
Or vice versa. More evidence that photojournalism these days is treated more as art than journalism

How publishers outsource their circulation
Is there a danger, however, that the brand could get diluted into an offsite formula?

Magazines spread swine flu!
Maybe. Not sure if there’s a scientific basis to this, aside from stopping people touching things other people have touched. Still, that headline will give me lots of Google juice

What New Yorkers read on the subway
Top result: The New Yorker

Jeremy crowdsources map of London’s magazine stores
Some great recommendations there. More! Onwards!

Martha Stewart dresses up for Hallowe’en
Nice/freaky twist on the ever-present cover star

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