Der Wedding is an annual magazine about an everyday Berlin suburb. It’s also a conscious antidote to the trendy, hipster side of the city.

Just as Karen is “made out of the ordinary”, Der Wedding is, according to German magazine gurus GuteSeiten, “dedicated to the topics, events, items of everyday life and small stories that can be found right on the doorstep.”

It’s also rather lovingly designed too – images here borrowed from GuteSeiten, who have more on their site, as do Slanted.

Though I don’t speak German, it looks like a keeper.

The main inspiration for Vintage is pretty clear. In fact, it’s declared openly in the second paragraph of the editor’s introduction.

“Inspired by Fleur Cowles’ Flair (published 1950-1951), a magazine that explored the possibilities of print, font, color, photography, and texture, while offering an array of articles—on art, music, fashion, food, travel, culture—written by noted artists and authors of the day …Vintage magazine brings to the fore, with the eloquent voices of today’s writers and artists, the impact of history on our present culture.”

Flair is a magazine I know pretty well – I have original copies of more than half its 13 issues, as well as the Flair 1953 annual and the giant Rizzoli Best of Flair book, which reprinted the magazine and its print effects almost in their entirety. At times portentous, prissy and focused on a small section of New York art-lovers, it nevertheless was a remarkable publication, as much for its playfulness in format (die cuts, different papers, fold outs – this in 1950-1, remember) as in its content (which featured such names as Tennessee Williams, Salvador Dalí and Eleanor Roosevelt).

A good inspiration to have then (except for its fate, which was to bankrupt one of America’s larger magazine companies), and Vintage certainly has no lack of ambition in its opening. It has lovely, nicely textured cover, and inside shows off some really nice die-cuts and effects.

The opening piece, which appears after the contents page but before the editor’s letter, is probably the magazine’s strongest in style and execution. It looks at the art and seduction of vinyl sleeves, with the article written on a mock-sleeve. A glossy sticker carries the headline and author credit at its centre.

Other articles include an illustrated diary (fictional? It’s not clear) from the 1950s about a young college girl visiting Paris, printed on thick tactile paper stock, a look at the history of Barbie (which, though interesting, seems almost entirely quoted from a single book about the doll), the history of the wedge shoe, hairstyles through the ages, a poem about visiting Warsaw, and the 1973 Ferrari Dino.

There are plenty of positives: the diecuts in the ‘hairstyles of the past’ piece are both playful and well-realised; an image from the wedge patent application is stuck on introduction page to the piece, hiding a modern wedge behind it; there are occasional full-bleed images of textiles that are both striking and fun. The spine is in part stitched with a wonderful red thread that sometimes peeps through.

There are also some missteps, in both design and content. When there isn’t a high design concept to hang it on, the design looks and feels amateurish, such as in the Barbie, Ferrari and Roman wine pieces. Putting the folios on the bottom of ad pages confuses the reading experience, and the magazine ends very abruptly, without much sense of pace.

The biggest problem, however, is with the presentation of the magazine’s basic concept. As beautiful an object it might sometimes be, I’m not clear who this magazine is for. It’s apparently about the impact of history on our culture, yet the articles aren’t presented in a way that makes you understand why they’ve been written, or how they connect to the world today. A lack of subheads or good ledes merely highlight the magazine’s weakness.

The original Flair, for all its faults, was very much rooted in the primary artistic and cultural movements of high-society New York at the time. Vintage reads like a magazine far less certain about when and where it belongs, let alone why anyone would buy it. Of course, I may not be the intended demographic, but I still think it needs to help guide the reader more towards each story.

I really wanted to like Vintage. A great deal of care was taken in designing and printing the effects used in this issue, without resorting to effects (eg foil, holographic) that would just be plain wrong for its intended theme. So far, though, the whole concept feels like it needs more work.

Vintage’s gratifyingly thick paper subscription cards list the magazine’s price as $30 for two issues a year. That’s not an impossible price, especially for something so tactile and physical, but unless it focuses its content better, comes up with a better overall design, and adds clearer pacing to the whole mix, it threatens to have an even shorter lifespan than its inspiration.

Quintatinta (translation: fifth ink) is one of my favourite design blogs. Written by Diego Areso, the art director of the Spanish newspaper Público, he reports on some remarkable corners of both the Spanish and international scene. Lovely guy, too.

Anyway, a recent blogpost of his deserves translating:

MediaPunta is a football magazine that is distributed around the main football stadia in Spain on game days. It’s first front page, since which the magazine has just celebrated its fifth birthday and 100 issues, promised to talk about football “from another point of view.” Its front pages are a great example of that viewpoint.

In the anniversary edition, there are four pages containing a compilation of those front pages. The text that accompanies this gallery, written by José Arroyo, the front-cover designer, is worthy of note.

“Ten seconds… is how long you’re going to spend on these four pages. Ten fucking seconds. Less time than it’ll take you to read this. Ten seconds to look through 100 front covers. I took five years to make them. They are a summary of my five years in MediaPunta, so don’t piss me off and please spend a little more time over them, because I worked hard. Perhaps in those five years I haven’t brought up a child, nor amassed a fortune, but I’ve done all of these front covers. And I’m proud. Of them, and to be a part of this utopia. So I’m going to suggest an exchange: my five years for two minutes of your life. Spend a few seconds on each cover, look at them with affection, slowly, even if you have to squint, and perhaps you’ll surprise yourself as you discover Obama lifting the World Cup, a head filled with turf (not sawdust), a treasure map… A football magazine? Yes, but from another point of view.”

Some of the covers are better than others, but all are worth a look over at Quintatinta. Won’t somebody think of Señor Arroyo’s nonexistent children?

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.

One: Because it’s developed into an interesting tool for short-form conversation among certain media-literate people. @ing people is like email without commitment, and it can garner responses from some who would never bother to reply to an email, if indeed you ever found their email address. I’ve got a few projects coming up which would be greatly enriched by big-brain participation, so here I am.

Two: Jeremy’s observation that most of his hits come from Twitter these days. It’s not quite true for me, but not too far off – and by not being there, the potential currency and circulation of this blog is reduced.

Three: Because it encourages me to follow Tweeters more actively. I’ve been watching many for a while, and it’s kind of fiddly if you aren’t using it yourself.

I intend to use it primarily for more informal work-related chatter and discussion. But it does bring me to a problem which broader content providers also need to consider: how important is it for me to archive tweets, and if so, how and where should I do it? Should a digest of tweets appear here on the blog? Should I also archive entire conversations I’m a part of? I use this blog as a place to put things that I find inspiring, thoughtful or useful. If I start to use Twitter the same way, as well as my existing Delicious feed, how does it all come together?

Another question: if your magazine’s output and reader interaction is spread across several media, is it your responsibility to find a way to bring it together as a holistic entity for future interpretation? Or is only the print edition intended for archiving, and Tweets, like live events or advertisements placed in other media, are mostly meaningless two weeks, two months, two decades hence? What about websites, iPad apps, other tech-dependent creations? Have we learned anything from the ironic fate of the Domesday project?

No real answers, just some things to think about as I continue to transmit across multiple platforms. Feel free to share your thoughts below, in 140 characters or more.

When I started Stack America, I wanted to add a few bonus extras into the mix. And so, I’m delighted to officially make public ‘The Designers Series’. Quite simply, it’s this: for each bimonthly Stack America mailing, we invite a magazine creative to make an exclusive print on the theme of ‘magazines’. And then we send it out along with our selection of remarkable independent mags.

Of course, Stack America subscribers already knew that, as last month they received an exclusive image made by Jeremy Leslie (yeah, that one). There’s a tiny square of it above. If you want to see the rest… well, you should have subscribed. Stack Original subscribers: you should also be getting it soon.

Meanwhile, my fellow Stack Americans, it is my honour to announce that next month’s mailing will include a really lovely, exclusive print by Robert Newman, former design director of New York, Fortune and Details. If you were thinking about subscribing before, surely that has tipped the scales. Also makes a lovely Valentine’s gift, you know.

(This is a cross-post with the Stack blog)

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

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.

Oh, you do graphic design? So does my iPhone.

Next up: the InDesign plugin that turns photos and text into layout, and the Word macro that writes SEO-friendly punning headlines. And then in ten years’ time, people will be taken out of the equation altogether, and it’ll just be iPhones quietly talking to each other.

WAD stands for We Are Different – it’s a French magazine covering the more out-there side of fashion and visual culture. It’s known for its covers, often using bare body parts to make unusual shapes. The latest edition is themed “Ten Magazines”, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

It has a lovely cover, above, with some smart cover spoofs visible on the Athenaeum website, and in a mini preview on WAD’s website here. I wonder what else is in there?

Fortune was begun in the midst of the great depression, and went on to create great modernist front covers and adventurous features beyond the normal financial scope.

An archive of some of the more interesting work is now online, including a fascinating piece on printing back in the day. Invaluable for students of printing and anyone else interested in how we got where we are.