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

WWD has broken this story, with few details and even fewer mixed metaphors than me, over here.

UPDATE: WWD now reports that FB is leaving “to focus all [his] energy” on Baron and Baron, his client-work studio. Coming only two weeks after a change in publisher, all is presumably not well at the big I.

The same piece claims that M/M Paris have been tapped up to replace FB at the top – a reversal of what happened at French Vogue in 2003, when FB replaced M/M as creative consultant. Now I’m a big fan of M/M, particularly their work with Bjork and their fashion alphabet, but they do strike me as a rather obvious choice. Expect more monochrome and elaborate typography.

Jeremy feels the same way.

The picture’s her, not me, btw.

Ever since it was announced in January, the relaunch of Andy Warhol’s Interview has been eagerly anticipated.

So what’s it like?

First, a bit of background. The duo now in charge – writer Glenn O’Brien and art director Fabian Baron, both credited as “Editorial Directors” – have been here before. In 1990, they worked together on the exact same publication, charged by new owners Brant Publications with relaunching the mag.

After a couple of years, Baron was poached by Harper’s Bazaar and O’Brien (who had been appointed as editor-in-chief aged 24) went off to a lucrative career in journalism for GQ and Vanity Fair among others.

Now they’re back, and this time O’Brien and Baron are part-owners of the magazine (along with Peter Brant, the ex-husband of the woman who owned it before), and they’ve invested heavily in a far wider distribution network, new paper stock (sorry Woz, though at least it’s still matt), a new format and a new approach.

Some observations:

- First, the cover: the rejig of the logo is incredibly subtle but it’s there – still handbrushed, a bit spikier than before. The cover is, apparently, the first ever published in America with a metallic cover (really?), which means that the smoothly colour red background looks lovely, and shimmers in a strange way on newsstands with good lighting. The subtle silver added to Kate Moss’s cat mask works well too, though the bar code in the corner spoils some of the understated effect. The serifed font with the (rather good) cover line gets a little lost, its high contrast meaning the thinner areas are a little too thin at distance. Still, I like it. Somewhat curiously, the spine does the celeb sell where the cover doesn’t: “It’s New Pussycat! Kate Moss Talks”. Though Moss isn’t known for being particularly silent. (Update: how they made the cover is documented here.)

- Page count: 264 + 4

- Trim size: 10 inches by 13 inches. The special cover is a little smaller than the trim and has gatefold ads on front and back, which are glued in the top corner to stop them flapping open when you pick it up.

- A lot of advertisers seemed to buy into the relaunch hype. The first page of editorial is on page 76, and there is only one right-hand page that isn’t an ad until page 161 (and that one has a left-hand ad). Pity the poor designers, as it’s very difficult to get much of a sense of flow for the first half of the mag. This issue was hyped as “The Fashion Issue”, though there’s no overt acknowledgement of that in the mag itself. There are some fashion articles, including one on “The Non-conformists” – a piece that uses a single quote from different designers to count as “interviews”. It’s a good excuse to show their outfits, though.

- Everything is an interview apart from the letters page, the Agenda/news pages and a rather odd Society page at the end. The formats vary a little, but mostly the design doesn’t change at all to indicate a shift in pace or theme. For the first half of the magazine, you have to look at the straplines in the top corner to have any idea what you’re looking at, and how it’s different from what went before / comes afterwards.

- Longer interviews still start with one-paragraph biographical summaries, followed by He said. She Said. Doesn’t make for much creativity in the writing – though that allows for fewer problems in using non-professional interviewers (see below).

- Andy Warhol’s shadow hangs long. He’s mentioned in three articles and two advertisements.







- There are a few additions but they don’t feel very innovative – cellphone camera photos; “Discovery” (for model-alike people who have real jobs); back page of a previous interview from the archives (just a reprint of the photograph, in this case of Christy Turlington, that doesn’t reveal much apart from “she was famous then too, but looked younger”.)

- The interviewers themselves are very much downplayed, with the sole exceptions of Mike Myers and the Joseph Kosuth studio. You have to hunt down the small print at the end of each article to find who these people are – which is a real wasted opportunity. One of my favourite parts of Interview was that these weren’t just another bunch of hacks – the interviewers had real relationships with the people featured, and often weren’t journalists at all. Hiding their names and connections away means overlooking one of the key features that makes the mag stand out. Just a glance at the Contributing Editor list confirms this: Marc Jacobs, Camille Paglia, Sean Penn, Edward Norton… So why hide it?

- According to the credits, there seem to be about 20 people working in the Interview office, and 27 interns.

- There are lots of medium-format photos that feature the border of the print, as if to say “We Don’t Use Digital Very Much”.

- Big articles end at the back of the magazine, in typical American style. Sometimes that’s unnecessarily irritating; could the Spike Lee interview really not have been edited to fit the final two paragraphs into its layout, rather than having to flick to the back to find them?

- It doesn’t read very well. This is a bit surprising, given that O’Brien is a very good writer (his Kate Moss interview is the best in the book, though it doesn’t reveal very much). The text, the intros, the selections… none feel particularly exciting, unusual or gripping, with the exception of the Maison Martin / Kosuth Studio piece (which is at least a neat idea, even though it turned out a bit dull).

- It’s very, very monochromatic. This does make the James Nares piece feel more shocking and relieving for its splash of colour – but it also means the rest of the magazine can feel rather flat at times.

And the rest of the design… it feels a little familiar. Here’s a very brief look at some of Baron’s work on French Vogue:

Vogue 2005






Vogue 2006






Vogue 2007



Here’s some spreads from the new edition of Interview:

It almost feels like going back to Vogue 2005, with 2006′s heavy black lines scattered throughout (as they are, especially in the first half of the magazine). It’s certainly missing the M/M-style playfulness with the large typography that came in 2007. Over at Harper’s Bazaar, Baron showed why people compared him with the master of pre/post war elegance Brodovitch, with designs like this one:





Consciously nodding to Brodovitch, but in a way that still felt up to date. In Interview, however, the design refuses to play. It’s straight, it’s formal, it doesn’t play or smile or change. No matter who the subject, this is how they are treated. The photography is stylish and, in the main, unthreatening.

The new Interview is intended, according to its Chairman, to be more “elegant”. It certainly is that. It is also, however, lacking any humour, colour, flair that the magazine desperately needs to be enjoyable. In feel, it’s similar to a lot of Dutch editorial design, albeit with a serifed copy font: heavy black lines, monochrome, lots of text, little humour and no details to engage or reward the close reader. And it starts to feel very same-y very quickly.

The only humour in the whole magazine seems to be Baron’s own photoshoot of models in crash helmets that eerily echo their outfits. The rest feels very earnest, very serious, very elegant and poised and fashionable – and very dull. Although ostensibly a fashion/movie/music/art magazine, really it’s now a fashion magazine that treats all other subjects as if they’re catwalk figures. It’ll probably play well to the advertisers and to a certain crowd – but it won’t have broad appeal.

Merely through its status and brand, Interview will get some big names to talk. It has a few good ideas (and some not so good ones); but overall the magazine just doesn’t flow. A combination of over-saturation with advertisements and indistinct sections means it feels more like a ragbag selection of celebrity-obsessed overheard conversations, presented in a distancing, “better-dressed than you” manner, than a carefully curated whole.

In truth, Interview was probably always thus, more or less; but the new broom has done little to address these problems, and has merely served to highlight them even more. At its height, Interview at least felt relevant, which this doesn’t. Perhaps it’s just the fashion issue; of course it’s still early days for the team and the new format to settle. But this is the big relaunch they’ve been hyping the house on, and I’m underwhelmed.

BBC to launch Lonely Planet magazine
Grauniad claims it will compete with Conde Nast Traveller and Sunday Times Travel. Surely it’s more likely to have Wanderlust and similar in its sights?

Esquire US produces handwritten cover lines
Now plagiarising itself

New luxury mag for iPhone
Not a first per se but having daily refreshed content in a bimonthly you buy on iTunes sounds intriguingly confusing. The price point sends mixed signals too

Is this the launch of the revamped Baron/O’Brien Interview?
The Kate Moss/Catwoman cover line suggests so. I wonder how those half-tones will come out in the printing? UPDATE: Yep, with increased distribution too

BAD IDEA opens up the Butcher’s Shop
Transparency and a lesson in good editing; mouseover for detailed comments. Part of their new Writer’s Lab

(Yet another) new contemporary arts magazine “takes flight”
I like the look of its selection, how it gives images space, and the playfulness of some of the giant typography. Will need good printing to make it all stand out. Not sure why, but it feels similar to the less-inspiring-but-also-Aussie Monument. Maybe it’s the architecture spread

Every copy has his thumbprint
Cute

Luxury magazine ads are up
Luxury and weddings do their usual trick of bucking the recession, hence the recent flurry of Monocle-alikes. Will be interesting to see what WSJ brings to the party

Five copies of Aspen go for $1,400
The first ‘magazine in a box’ is in high demand

Baron and O’Brien turn Marc Jacobs into Andy Warhol
And they do it on the cover of that Warhol icon, Interview. As clear a statement as you’ll get that says “we’re in charge now”. More pics here

Flaunt makes 29-year-old former intern their new Editor in Chief
Either he’s good or they’re desperate

Amazon fights to keep cockfighting magazine on its site
It’s still online at time of writing