Category
New Launches
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New Launches, Shameless self-promotion, Teaching
emDash
I’ve had a lot of job titles at magazines and newspapers over the years, but “faculty adviser” is a new one. The premiere issue of emDash is a collaboration between students in my design writing and editorial design classes at George Mason University. Though aimed primarily at the GMU community, those curious about what’s engaging [...]
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Art Direction, New Launches
A fleeting….
06.12.08 | Permalink | 2 CommentsWhat is Glimpse? I’ve been trying to figure that out. At first, I thought it was the clearest evidence that Good had been certified big league—having spawned this knockoff from the deep-pocketed National Geographic Association. But, Glimpse is not quite Good (in more ways than one, actually). Nor is it quite a knock-off of Co-Op [...]
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New Launches, On the racks
Buyer’s Remorse
04.24.08 | Permalink | 3 CommentsreMarriage is the magazine for “Before, During, and Happily Ever After.” I suppose that “before, during and after” remarrying is not as broad a topic as “before, during and after the bris,” nor as weird as “before during and after the funeral,” but the cover lines, “Bride’s Dress Dilemma: Pouf or Posh?” “Today’s Mix and [...]
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New Launches
Parched…
04.18.08 | Permalink | 3 CommentsThe editors of Canteen use the intro page of the second issue to bash some low hanging fruit—author Stephen King—based on his contention that the short story is currently moribund. Alas, the magazine does little to prove him wrong in the pages that follow. Nevertheless, I was quite taken with the elegant design of the [...]
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New Launches
La fashionista Enfant
I’ve written before about the propensity for satire at my old alt-weekly. But one ill-fated attempt at mirth at someone else’s expense was a year-in-the-[not]-making spoof of the Washingtonian, a city magazine that, in my 11 years in DC, has cycled through the same yearly schedule of lowest-common-denominator content over and over (and over) again. [...]
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New Launches
I’ve been…
01.14.08 | Permalink | 3 CommentsI wrote a post a while back that was critical of JPG Magazine. Within 45 seconds (approximately), Business Director Devin Poolman responded with a long, thoughtful, and well-argued (though ultimately unconvincing) rebuttal to my argument that JPG was essentially a fraudulent venture. Oh, I didn’t mean that JPG isn’t a magazine, or even that the [...]
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New Launches
In Living Color
4c is a new English-language annual from Belgium dedicated to the proposition that what’s important in life is only skin-deep. This is appropriate I suppose—the glossy, a new foray into publishing from Techni-Coat International, a manufacturer of plastic coatings knows the value of the superficial. If there is no there there in 4c—the magazine bounces [...]
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New Launches
Personal Development
Unlike most glossies, Personal Development is not saddled with editors, designers, ad reps or business people. Instead, their masthead lists “Directors of Wisdom,” a “Mistress of Imagination,” a “Guru of Finance,” a few “Wisdom Wordsmiths,” some “Superheroes” (including both “Superman” and “Wonder Woman”) and a “Director of the Canvas.” I don’t know, perhaps all the [...]
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New Launches
Mergers and acquisitions
Introducing Man About Town, the graphic lovechild of McSweeney’s, GQ—and possibly ABA style—when I opened the spread above, I was briefly afraid I had been served. MAT, a new British biannual, mixes color fashion plates in with its gray, uncoated, and devilishly difficult-to-photograph text-driven pages. (In other words, sorry about image quality with this post.) [...]
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New Launches
Nostrovia
One might think that a nation of a billion people is a large enough newsbeat to fill an interesting glossy—but that supposition remains speculative at best on the pages of China Today, a government-sponsored book with a business focus. Because of CT and other international regionals—most of which have agendas peripheral to surprising, entertaining and [...]
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New Launches
Livin’ Small
If Bond is a rudderless magazine hitting a trend ten years too late, what is one to make of Lofts, a new publication from the editors of Fussy House That Smells Like Potpourri and Mothballs, and here long after the commercial debasement of the word “loft.” While once “Loftiness” meant 16-foot ceilings and 20,000 square [...]
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New Launches
It’s a nice day for a….
10.14.07 | Permalink | 3 CommentsI had an alternative wedding. The rabbi-performed ceremony may not have seemed “alternative” to my elderly relatives (though there may have been a bit of clucking about Reb’s Mickey Mouse neck tie) but then–at the very end something transformative happened: a chocolate buttercream wedding cake was served rather than the typical white fondant. What, you’re [...]
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New Launches
Faux Pas Only
09.24.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsIf you’re one of the legion of bubbling under-the-hot-100 magazine designers (in other words, not a DD at Condé Nast, Time, Inc., or thems like that there) you may well have heard of FPO sometime in the last year or so. It’s been some time in the making but the magazine launches soon. Editor/Publisher Rob [...]
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New Launches
Tuned out
09.03.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsConsidering the runaway success of Cargo magazine, it was inevitable that someone would attempt another shopping magazine for men. Antenna bravely enters the arena, positioned as the shopper for guys too hip for shoppers. This shoot-and-miss targeting may seem to represent a problem—people too cool for a magazine won’t read it—but it’s actually here where [...]
Designing Magazines
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Designing Magazines is a book and blog edited by Jandos Rothstein. The book is published by Allworth Press You’ll find contributor biographies and links here.Order the book
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