July 2007
The Archives
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New Launches
Artful Blogging
Artful Blogging from Somerset Studio is a charming example of old media getting all up in new media’s bidness. The new quarterly looks at the world of “artistic blogs” which, if you know anything about Somerset (sic?) is not the world of high art. You won’t find Lee Bontecou here—but AB is full of interesting [...]
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Classics
The Confessional
A few weeks ago I was stacking up my collection of old magazines, and I came across a copy of True Confessions from the late ’80s. I bought it for one of what I now realize was a long series of exercises in the individualized course of study that trained me to become a magazine [...]
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Misc.
Local Vision
A few days ago I wrote about my old chair at Washington City Paper. Yesterday it was announced that that chair (along with current occupant and DM contributor Pete Morelewicz) was being eliminated—or at least that’s the rumor. City Paper, and its sister publication The Chicago Reader have been sold to Atlanta’s Creative Loafing chain—and [...]
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Backbenchers
Culturing Media
07.25.07 | Permalink | 4 Comments8020 Publishing is a revolutionary company that brings the power of online communities to create printed magazines—well at least that’s what their web site says. The company is responsible for JPG magazine, which just celebrated its first anniversary and will soon launch Everywhere, a new travel magazine. As a blogger and card-carrying member of the [...]
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Custom Publishing
That’s Piola
In case you were wondering, yes, someone in America wakes up every morning the art director of the in-flight magazine for a pizza parlor Piola, published irregularly, is the magazine of Piola Pizzeria, an Italian chain with offshoots in the US and Brazil, and it even offers reasonably good-by-chain-standards pie along with the light lit. [...]
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The Stacks
Our latest premiere
I’ve long enjoyed browsing the Premiere Issue Project, but it raises an interesting question—what exactly is a premiere issue? Before and during a launch publishers might do limited-run issues to garner interest from readers and advertisers, and once the issue is actually in production they may slap the word “premier” on not just one but [...]
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Classics, Redesigns
Weird Science
Speaking of web-inspired stupidity, I caught the just-redesigned Scientific American the other day. A step back from the clean, contemporary look the magazine had been sporting, the new SA seems to reflect the belief that print is irrelevant so it might as well look the part. Now saddled with an odd mix of mid-century typography [...]
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Off the racks
Death Watch
07.16.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsI don’t agree with the premise of the site—that magazines are a dying medium—but I enjoy the gallows humor of Magazine Death Pool, written by an anonymous and keen observer of magazines, who is clearly quite knowledgeable about both maganomics and content–and who spends a lot of time in nail salons. Death Pool looks predominantly [...]
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New Launches
Project Organization
Their plan is diabolical in it’s simplicity. You subscribe to the new independent Organize, a glossy about getting things in order. It transforms your life. Before long your home is like a walk-in filing cabinet, there’s a place for everything and everything’s in its place. Then the next issue arrives—where do you put it? how [...]
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Shameless self-promotion
Designing in Restaurants
I have an article in the current Print on the vast quantities of graphic design on display in chain eateries. Hmm, The Scottish Field—whatever happened to that?
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Process
Illustration on the cover
07.11.07 | Permalink | 3 CommentsI spoke at Folio last year on ways to improve a magazine without going through a full-blown redesign. You can read a webified version of my presentation here. One of my suggestions—which were aimed at designers of smaller and controlled-circulation magazines—was to use more illustration, particularly on the cover. Illustration is more compositionally controllable than [...]
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Off the racks
Marmalade
A bunch of years ago, I interviewed to AD a startup publication aimed at systems administrators. The Internet bubble was still pre-bust, and the publisher like other e-entrepreneurs, had a pile of money he was looking to use to gain a little legitimacy and recognition in old media. His vision for the magazine intrigued me. [...]
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Pages
Satire
07.07.07 | Permalink | 2 CommentsI sat in the art director’s chair at Washington City Paper for eight years. It was a job I loved, and when I finally left I thought a lot about what I was leaving behind. I had good friends there, I knew I’d miss the fun and relentless schedule of a weekly publication, and the [...]
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Classics
Where the Highway Ends?
If you need a photograph of an Arizona landscape, there isn’t a better first call you can make than to Arizona Highways magazine, as I learned last month while commissioning art for a forthcoming story on surveillance cameras in Phoenix. AH has long been known for spectacular photography and exacting standards, they are one of [...]
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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