long live magazines 2

Here are the second lot of thoughts from the magazine design conference last week. As I say, I don't know much about this stuff so I can't really do a proper write-up. I'm just reporting on things that caught my eye / ear / attention.

Jeremy Leslie is Creative Director of John Brown and writer of magculture. He was very good. A great combination of deep knowledge worn lightly and an ability to enthuse and inform. Excellent stuff.

Some things that stuck out:

It had never occurred to me before that the UK magazine market is unusually dependent on news-stand sales. In the US, for example, subscription sales are much more important. And it's likely that emergent markets like Russia and China are going to be more subscription based. Their sheer size makes it necessary. And when you have a subscription relationship with your readers you can do different things, take more risks. Your cover can be more elegant and less shouty. And you can be more 'magaziney'.

Magaziney-ness was a great thought from Jeremy - that magazine's response to digital should be to get more 'magaziney'. Do the things that only magazines can do. Things to do with solidity of form, objectiness, to do with the legibility of ink on paper, with the enforced juxtapositions of print lay-outs, the richness of colour, all that stuff. He lamented the fact that mags don't do so many things like posters and pull-outs and tip-ins and things, like they used to.

He also made me realise what a broad church mags can be. Sure, there are the massive circulation things but there are also magazines that are really art pieces. Limited editions. Often critiques of magazines in magazine form. Like the way this One Page Magazine project illustrates the way the logos in Vogue are much more shouty than the headlines in Hello. I like the idea of magazines as art. As per Sound Art.

And last in the afternoon was William Owen of Made By Many. He was very good too. With a great central thought: from magazines as products to magazines as services. He illustrated the idea with some sites (most not from regular magazine companies): stylediary, normal room, instructables and arseblog.

Sometimes it's fantastic to sit in a room and reflect on the fact that something human, spontaneous and funny like arseblog is completely and utterly the right way to do something. And it's something that all the great brains and talents at huge publishing and media empires can't figure out to do. I love that.

Mr Owen left us with a good slide of conventional magazine thinking to ignore. And a few good phrases to remember: Don't Finish and Polish. And Launch and Learn. Excellent stuff.

Comments

[neilperkin]

Hi Russell. Thanks for both your posts on Long Live Magazines - good stuff. One thing that never ceases to dazzle me about magazine people is the passion they have for their medium and that really seems to have come across. There's a fantastic book if your interested: 100 Years Of Magazine Covers. Some fantastic individual gems in there as well as being a document of changing times:
http://tinyurl.com/yns7zu

[Rod McLaren]

Yeah, good posts Russell. And Arseblog is brilliant, yes.

[dan burgess]

the http://www.arseblog.com/WP/index.php has been my daily source of arsenal news, banter and hilarity for a few years, his weekly arsecasts are also genius. i was chatting very recently to someone about the 'cult of the amateur' view that we're dumbing down the genuine/official journalistic talent - i don't really agree - in the case of arseblog, it's his absolute passion and enthusiasm for the club delivered with hilarious honesty which shines through - i go there every morning without fail, get up to speed with any news, and always laugh loudly at least once. That's a great thing. I know it's a bit of a cliche but it is a proper 'for the fan by the fan' and i think that's where a lot of mags have tripped up, lost touch with their roots, lacking a clear point of view, low on energy and enthusiasm.
crickey - must be off..

[Ben]

That One Page thing is excellent.

I think Paul H Colman knows the bloke who writes Arseblog.

[Northern]

Thanks for doing these posts. I'm up to my neck with learning about fashion, with less time to graze, it's so great to have all this fodder to tap into.