So, yes, it turns out that running the world’s most popular Books section (no exaggeration, I’ve seen the numbers) is somewhat time consuming.

Which means no frequent magazine-themed blogging in the mainstream for me. But I did manage to somehow squeeze one out before the end of the year, and more will emerge before too long.

For now, you may satisfy yourselves with my newest missive, “11 Amazing Magazines You’ve Never Heard Of“, a title that regular Magtastic readers will find inaccurate, and grammarians will find ends with a preposition. Still, plenty to enjoy by clicking through. It will also surprise no-one that it’s a slideshow. We have company standards to maintain, you know.

AND! It gives me a further opportunity to keep up with an annual tradition here on Magtastic, which is to remind you all that a Stack America subscription is an excellent last-minute gift for anyone Stateside. Just sayin’.

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.

PAQs

Q: Why did you take this job?
A: Because it’s a genuinely exciting company. Because I think I can do something fantastic with the role – editors get a lot of editorial independence within their sections, which means I’ll stand or fall on what I do with it. And I have plenty of ideas for what I’m going to do with it.

Also, I’m excited by their frankly immense readership figures, their current ambitions, and about being a tiny part of a major news operation. This is going to be fun.

Q: Aren’t you the magazine guy? What do you know about books?
A: Certainly, I have more experience and contacts within the global magazine industry than I do in the books industry.

I do have some experience with book publishing, as an author and a former Editorial Director of a publishing company that made books among other products; Reading in Four Dimensions was written following three months working at Brown University on a lecture and workshop series about the future of the book, and I’ve also been following book industry news for some time among my RSS and Twitter feeds, as part of my ongoing fascination with new and unusual storytelling.

However, it was made clear to me that I was hired for my editorial vision, rather than my insider contacts. This does mean that I have some catching up to do in getting to know all the relevant people, but I have a feeling that the HP name will help me get my phone calls returned.

Q: Will you keep running Stack America and Colophon?
Yes indeed. You’d have to pry those from my cold, dead hands.

Q: What’s going to happen to this blog?
More exciting news: I’m going to be cross-posting magazine blogposts between here and The Huffington Post. This means, a) the blog is about to come back in a big way, and b) yes, my pretties, these reviews, rants and witters are getting a mainstream audience. Bonus points for readers who click on both versions.

Q: What does Reading in Four Dimensions have to do with the new job?
I wrote the first draft in April, based on a talk I gave at Brown University in early March. It probably helped me get the job, but otherwise the timing of its publication is a rather happy accident. It wasn’t intended as a manifesto to the books industry as declaimed by the new Books Editor of The Huffington Post, but there you go.

Q: I’m a book industry PR/have written a book I think you should feature/want to tell you some industry gossip. Can I email you?
Not right now. My first day is this coming Monday, much of which will probably be spent meeting people, learning where to store my umbrella, and trying to remember the location of the restroom.

Basically, if you already have a contact email address for the Books section at HP, stick with that until further notice. If you don’t, find one, and use it. Insider tip: annoying me at my personal email address doesn’t increase the likelihood of favorable coverage.

Q: I don’t like The Huffington Post.
A: That isn’t a question. But keep an eye on the Books section anyway. You might just learn something interesting.

It promises to be a busy day or two on the blog, but first I want everyone who sends me lovely magazines/has me on their mailing lists to stop what you’re doing right now, and make sure you have a New York mailing address for me.

If you don’t, please drop me a line at andrew [at] losowsky.com so we can make sure that I actually receive what you send. And bless you for sending it.

Thank you!

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…

(Image from Pulp International)

You’ve probably noticed, this blog has been a little quiet lately. A major move, connection problems, a melted logic board, and much (fun) new work are all likely parents of this newborn infant of silence, but fear not! For the baby will start to bawl again very soon, with the full force of a metaphor stretched too far.

I have news, reviews, some strangeness, and even a pending new event to announce. The Blogsplosion will be blogsploding in your face again very soon. I’ve been busy, oh yes I have.

In the meantime, why not read the magazines that some of NYC’s leading media mogels are reading, courtesy of Ad Week?

So my first Three of the Month ended up with a 33% success rate. Let’s see if we can help give a financial boost to these three worthwhile projects who need your help.

Her Royal Majesty
In these monarchical times, it seems only appropriate that this magazine is made in the capital of the French republic. Literary strangeness, artistic leanings, all sealed in with a blob of wax. Yessiree Ma’am.

Trunk magazine
I sent out the first issue of Trunk through Stack America, and it’s a hugely ambitious project: a new newsstand-quality travel and style magazine, entirely created by a small team of talented people. The founder, David, used to be photo editor on Travel + Leisure, but his own magazine is far more ambitious.

Outpost Journal
First, a declaration of interest: I’m on the Outpost Journal board of advisors (which has mostly involved helping them get in touch with other independent magazines). It’s a cracking idea, though – each issue focuses on the community-based creativity taking place in an otherwise-overlooked city in the USA. There is, it turns out, life beyond Brooklyn and San Francisco. Issue one is about Pittsburgh.

If you’d like your magazine’s campaign to be featured on Three of the Month, drop me a line – contact details in the sidebar.

There are a few, remarkable people who show us that there’s another way.

They take the tools from our hands, and do amazing things with them that we could never have contemplated. Where we see unbreakable rules, they see uninteresting choices. The results leave some people so affected that they never again look at their tools in the same way.

These people generally fall into three categories. First, there are those who were so far ahead of society’s ability to comprehend their efforts that their work is only “discovered” and lauded after their deaths. Kafka was one. Van Gogh another.

Second are those who break established rules again and again to increasing acclaim, yet always stay ahead of their imitators simply because they don’t know of any other way to behave. Picasso, let’s say. Radiohead, perhaps.

And then there are those people who have a single flash of genius at the very moment that society’s mirrors are perfectly aligned to catch its light. Though the rest of their work may be perfectly competent, everyone clamors for the lightening to strike again and again. It’s not these people’s fault that they can’t replicate that moment.

Given the title of this piece, you can probably see where I’m going with this one.

David Carson’s editorial design career currently has three significant phases of its own. Firstly, there was Transworld Skateboarding, Surfer, and Beach Culture. A former professional surfer (ninth in the world at one point, apparently) Carson created a sprawling, gridbreaking design style for these publications, taking every element he was given for the page and treating them as visual objects to play with, often whimsically.

He essentially set himself up as an artist who had taken on the position of a graphic designer – text, typography, photography were all elements of equal weight, to be treated like free-floating pieces of a collage. This sensation continues to echo in his work.

Then came the extended flash of genius that was Ray Gun – a lightening strike that lasted three years. Under the almost-criminally overlooked editorship of founder Marvin Scott Jarrett (who went on to create Nylon), and working with art directors such as Chris Ashworth, Carson invented a sprawling, gridbreaking, unpredictable, and above all highly distinctive design language. It was strange, experimental, and often unpleasant. Yet it was rarely less than interesting, and its look and feel matched the nonconformist attitude of the grunge music that the magazine covered.

Graphic design is about content and message, and his designs only truly succeed when their message (usually attention-seeking confusion, chaos, nonconformity) match the story within the rest of the content. Some grunge tunes were barely more than unlistenable rage; some of Carson’s designs were unreadable messes. Purists and industry leaders hated both; at a time when computer-based DTP was encouraging typographic homogeneity, they were a perfect match.

The magazine’s aesthetic was widely copied by design students everywhere, and richly deserves its place in the unofficial hall of cult editorial fame.

And so Carson became a hero figure to many designers aged under 30. The phrase “The End of Print” was coined in reference to him, tongue in cheek, by another contemporary typographic enfant terrible, Neville Brody. Never one for deadlines or even necessarily turning up to his own events, Carson’s legend became as rebelliously romantic as it was untouchable.

Often passed over by those searching for a nonconformist idealism to match his visuals is the fact that he left Ray Gun in 1995, in order to focus the work of his studio on corporate projects and personal artwork, with the occasional editorial commission for old times’ sake.

Now, sixteen years since he left Ray Gun, we have Carson – a bimonthly magazine named after the man’s own legacy. It’s edited by Alex Storch, previously the editor-in-chief of a counter culture online magazine about Los Angeles, with creative direction by DavidCarsonDesignInc.

Here’s the first strange thing about Carson: Beach Culture appeared as part of an emerging surf culture, documenting what it meant to drop out and surf. Ray Gun was created as way of discussing and contributing to the rise of grunge, and everything it stood for. So what is the cultural driving force that led to the introduction of Carson?

Independent magazines. It feels like this magazine exists principally because of independent publishing. Even though magazines aren’t its theme, the often nonconformist energy in this ever-growing field is what has made it possible, and made it happen.

However, the first issue of Carson isn’t a reaction against all that the editorial establishment stands for. Instead, it’s a kind of mishmash of unconventional storytelling, self-aggrandizement and shameless promotion loosely connected to the magazine’s opening theme, Survival.

First, the positive:

The best piece by far in both design and content are Mike Doughty’s Ten Kinds of Survival. Its personal, engaging, bloglike style points to a possible direction for the whole concept: tight, sharp, witty, dark personal publishing, echoed by Carson’s slightly creepy, individual twist on the images and (literally) on the text.

The design forces the reader into a more active level of engagement with the words, questioning without obstructing. The piece is not easy reading, either literally or figurative. The design complements it well without becoming overbearing.

Though I’m not entirely clear why it was applied, I really like this typographic bar code, too. I felt very positive about what was to come.

The inverted pyramids on this piece also made for an unexpected reading experience.

However, that’s about where my warmth ends regarding this issue of Carson. Some of the content, as I mentioned early, reads as thin PR-led copy by people pushing furniture/books/themselves on the reader in self-important terms. Writers’ biographies often stretch to two paragraphs (and are styled like body text, which doesn’t help, as they read like the end of the article.) There’s a lot of vapid writing, without much evidence of a tight, unconventional editorial remit. Potentially the best piece of the lot, by Neil Strauss, collapses due to poor editing on the second page.

Many of the designs are unusual, but without a strong editorial concept behind their strangeness, they just seem willfully hard to read. Paragraphs without indents or separations might look pretty, for instance, but they’re hell on the reading eye. That’s never Carson’s main concern, of course – his designs only ever referenced a text’s content in passing, if at all.

But if you’re going to hire him to design a magazine, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t, then you have to provide content that is not only enhanced by his stylings (some of which feel quite fresh, most of which feel like they could have been taken straight from 1994), but also reward the inevitable strain of trying to read most of the words. Almost nothing in Carson did.

Ultimately, however, the biggest problem of the magazine doesn’t come from its big-name designer, but its overall concept. I just don’t understand what it’s about, who it’s for, or why it exists.

The very best titles justify themselves through everything they do, because without them we wouldn’t adequately follow, understand, analyze, enjoy, learn about, react to whatever corner of the world we inhabit. They force readers to subscribe because the idea of missing an issue actually feels painful. They convey the passion of an editor for whom every word is a result of a painstaking decision process.

But far too many pieces in this first issue of Carson felt rushed, undramatic, and left me thinking, “So?”

This is only the first issue, and I will watch to see how it improves. It has a long way to go. Right now, it feels like Carson exists because a) his name means something, and b) now is a time for independent publishing. It’s not enough.

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

A year ago today, Europe was dealing with a large invisible cloud looming over its airspace, and I was coming up with a crazy idea.

In the year since, Stranded magazine has been talked about on BBC online and radio, in The Independent, Conde Nast Traveler, El Pais, Wired, Nieman Lab… and so on. This showcase in crowdsourced creation, awesomely designed by Matt MacArthur, is, of course, still available.

Though the eruption and the photos/illustrations/writing all occurred a year ago, the magazine actually went on sale in September, which is how long it took Matt and I to pull all the content together. Here’s the stats from the magazine so far:

That $1,380 isn’t profit to me – it’s what the magazine has so far raised for the International Rescue Committee, who help people more permanently stranded around the globe (in fact, due to the way MagCloud distributes the money, I’ve been hit with a higher tax bill because of it!)

Anyway, it’s a great cause, so if you don’t already have a copy, why not?

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.

Click to see them bigger; I like.