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Finally, things are somewhat settling enough to post properly again. If you’ve sent me a magazine over the last few weeks, rest assured I’ll get to it. Meantime, you can also find me tweeting (and retweeting) magazine news @twitsplosion. And now, on with the show.
The main inspiration for Vintage is pretty clear. In fact, it’s declared openly in the second paragraph of the editor’s introduction.
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So I’m now officially on Twitter, @twitsplosion. Hunt me down, follow me, say hello.
I say ‘officially on Twitter’ because, well, I’ve been lurking there for a while, as well as using it for various other means.
I have my own method of dealing with new social media: I join it straight away, peer under the bonnet, poke at it with a stick, figure out what I think it does and why, calculate how much time it threatens to bleed from me, and then leave my account in a drawer somewhere to gather dust, until I’m persuaded to give it another prod. Come, join my group on Orkut, and list me on Friendster, why don’t you.
So why Tweet properly, and why now? Three reasons, really.
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The third in my roundup of MyMags, RatMag is a little different from AOKI and Hey Olivia!
This is the second MyMag review. The first is here.
Hey Olivia! is the curated selection of Olivia Munn, an American model and presenter of Attack Of The Show, a sort of gadget show with comedy sketches on cable channel G4. She’s the only woman in the initial MyMag selection, but her magazine’s intended audience seems firmly rooted towards a testosterone-heavy demographic. As with the other magazines, the cover contains a list of the publications inside, in this case handwritten by Olivia herself.
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.
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I have a backlog of great things that’s threatening to collapse my desk, so I’ll get back to talking print more regularly, not least so I can finally archive the buggers and reclaim my workspace.
Let’s start with something lovely.
Occasionally, a new magazine will try to create its own niche. Men’s Health reached out to ab-craving males who like monochrome photography. Monocle noticed that what the Economist really lacked was good shopping tips. And now we have Beef!, a curious new offering from Gruner + Jahr, one of Europe’s biggest publishing groups.
Since my German doesn’t stretch beyond the phrase ‘die toten hosen‘, I asked Kati Krause, the rather talented former Ling editor and editor of the Colophon magazine, to tell us all about it.
“Beef! is like Esquire, but with meat instead of suits: clean design, good illustration and photography, four different kinds of paper (all thick and matte), original content ideas, and a lot of “what modern man simply has to know.” Which in this case means teaching 30-something advertising executives how to skin a rabbit, how to distinguish the different odours (and their meanings) of a wine gone bad, and that the world’s best whisky comes not from Scotland, but from Japan.
This website focuses on developments
in the magazine industry around
the world.
It is written by
Andrew Losowsky,
a writer and editor based in the USA. He has so far edited two books about magazines, and
has ideas for
many more.
He writes about magazines for The Wall Street Journal and others, and
is co-curator of
the Colophon international magazine biennale. He also runs
Stack America.
The rest of the time, he creates experiences.
