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I've just been listening to Chris Anderson talk about his 'Free' idea on IT Conversations, specifically about books and how they might get free. I'm not sure I agree with him that an analogue book is necessarily better than a digital one, but I like his entrepreneurialism in using freeness to increase his sales. It's well worth a listen, and it's reminded me that I need to get on with doing something about eggbaconchipsandbeans. More soon.
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.
Mr Tim Milne, who spoke about printing and things at Interesting is trying a little experiment - trying to turn direct mail into something you might actually want to receive. He's running a test programme at the moment and looking for volunteers for the pilot. (I think you have to be in the UK though.) All the details are here, have a look, it might be rather, well, interesting. You might have to be quick about it, the deadline is midnight tomorrow.
Went to an excellent conference on Friday; Magazines Are Dead! Long live the Magazine! (can you guess what it was about?). I learned loads most of which I'm sure is obvious to anyone who thinks about this stuff so I won't repeat it all.
But here are some the things that stuck out for me:
Paul Rennie rejoices in the title of Head of Context in Graphic Design at Central Saint Martin’s, but many may know him as the man who used to have a splendid shop on Lamb Conduit Street selling all sorts of brilliant posters and Festival of Britain stuff. Said shop is now in Folkestone and is well worth a visit.
He mentioned loads things that really struck me.
One was that between 1939 and 1950 the economic foundation of magazines was undermined by the war effort / recovery and there was very little advertising. And he mentioned that Orwell suggested that this meant a lot of innovative things could be done because of the lack of interference from advertisers. I think that's what he said, though I may have got it wrong. I've had a dig around and all I can find is one of his Tribune / As I Please pieces suggesting that you can't read a decent and independent book review because the newspapers are all in the thrall to the big money spent by publishers. (June 1944) And this, from April 1947:
"Recently I was talking to the editor of a newspaper with a very large circulation, who told me that it was now quite easy for his paper to live on its sales alone. This would probably continue to be true, he said, until the paper situation improved, which would mean reverting to pre-war bulk, at enormously greater expense. Until then, advertisements would be of only secondary importance as a source of revenue. If that is so—and I believe many papers could now exist without advertisements—is not this just the moment for an all-out drive against patent medicines?
Before the war it was never possible to attack patent medicines in a big way, because the Press, which would have had to make the exposure, lived partly off advertisements for them...."
So, that seems more about trying to be rid of snake-oil nonsense while no-one was dependent on the revenue, which isn't quite the same thing, but still has contemporary echoes. I'm going to have a dig round for more on this because I'd love to know how things like Picture Post survived with reduced advertising revenue. Was there state subsidy or was it all cover price? Because there are probably lessons to be learned for the magazine market now.
He also talked about how interesting Picture Post was in the war years, a startling mix of knitting patterns, bathing beauties and instructions on how to build molotov cocktails. This was due to the efforts of Tom Wintringham, veteran of the International Brigades, the only significant Marxist military expert of his time and inspiration for the Home Guard. He contributed many articles on irregular warfare to Picture Post and the Daily Mirror. Gives you a different image of the Home Guard doesn't it?
Mr Rennie also talked quite a lot about Architectural Review - about how the post-war paper shortages forced it to use different paper stocks in a single issue, which turned into a feature, characteristic of the magazine. And about the relationship between the leading edge architecture of the day and the photographers and architectural magazines. He suggested that there was an interesting research project in investigating whether the architecture was influenced and led by the way it looked in the pages of a magazine rather than in the real world. I bet you can say the same for contemporary technology designers.
Simon Esterson was up next and he was brilliant too. He also struck a really nice balance between discussing the economic/structural context and aesthetics. And showed a lot of magazines that you just wanted to rush out and buy. Like Twen from the 60s/70s. I'd never seen it before, but even with my blurry photo you can see how nice this spread is.
He also talked about Roland Schenk who designed many of Haymarket's trade titles and, starting with Campaign created a look that you see again and again in that sector. As per this issue of Account:
He also drew a link between George Lois who did all those famous covers for Esquire and Pearce Marchbank who did the same for Time Out. Both seemed to be creating the sort of arresting image that would act as an ad for the rest of the magazine, rather than just shouting at you about the contents. (I can't seem to find many examples online of Mr Marchbank's covers. Shame.)
He talked about the Architectural Review's Manplan issues, a creative triumph and commercial failure, which you can read about here and look at here, here and here.
And, he reminded us of the way that Q magazine reinvented the 'back of the book' when they launched. I haven't read Q for a thousand years, but I still remember the excitement of discovering that it didn't just tail off at the end, the reviews and listings and little features at the back had been paid attention to and were actually worth reading.
I'm going to leave the next two speakers for another post, because they too were excellent and I want to do them justice. And I'm not made of typing you know.
One of the things that's still delightful about scouring the bloggiverse is the way it gives you a glimpse inside other professional lives. The things people think about, care about, pay attention to. It's good to see the world through other people's eyes, especially if they're enthusiastic eyes (I think I stretched that image too far.) One of my favourite recent finds has been The Year In Pictures (found, I think, via The Sartorialist); the thoughts and discoveries of James Danziger, who has his own art photography gallery. He writes about photography in a way that makes you want to know more. And he picks some really choice pieces out of YouTube.
The Best Urban Spaces project is coming along very nicely. So nicely, in fact, that we're going to set a deadline for the first set of images - the end of January. Dan has all the details here. But, basically, if you're like to contribute you need to get your picture in the pool by then. And, please, try and add some words about why it's a good space, or just a little detail about where it is etc. Then we can get Mr Goggin to start working his magic. Excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing how this all ends up.
I'm a big fan of books like this; books where history, geography, anecdotes and odd facts bump together into a mash of stuff you wish you remembered when you were walking about. Because then you could pass an address and say something knowledgeable, historical and amusing about it. I can only ever remember one such address: 54 Berners Street. (And if you don't know about the Berners Street Hoax - have a look, it's genius.) So, I thought that maybe building a map of these things might help:
page 10 : William Douglas, fourth Duke Of Queensbury, better known as 'Old Q' who lived at the turn of the eightenth century in a large property that stood between Old Burlington Street and Saville Row...had other, more disconcerting eccentricities, like consuming a supper of roast poulet and lime punch every midnight, and then being woken at three in the morning to take a meal of veal cutlet.
page 13 : At 1 Seamore Place, later razed to extend Curzon Street west, lived the colourful Alfred de Rothschild, who liked nothing more than to stage circuses at home with himself as ringmaster, cracking a long whip. He had his servants well-trained. When a guest once asked for milk in his tea a powdered flunky responded in a flash: 'Jersey, Hereford or Shorthorn, sir?'
page 26 : The Dorchester was the first setting for Foyle's literary luncheons. In their early days these featured the novelist DH Lawrence, the actor Charlie Chaplin and the Ethiopian ruler, Haile Selassie. When Sir John Gilbey of the gin distillers spoke for one and a half hours, causing a guest to fall asleep, William Foyle, the bookstore's owner, approached the sleeping gentleman and hit him on the head with his gavel, only to be told by the awakened guest: 'hit me harder, I can still hear him'.
page 29 : In 1935 (the Grosvenor House Hotel) was the setting for a most unusual event, an aromatic dinner held by a strange new organisation - the Smell Society - founded by the eccentric lawyer Ambrose Appelbe, who later represented Mandy Rice-Davies. Applebe hoped to refresh London nostrils with sheets of paper impregnated with the smells of the seaside and create new words to describe the smell of things such as roast turkey and tar.
page 126 : The Blakes moved half a mile to Green Street (now Orange Street) by Leicester Square. And it was while living there in the summer of 1783 that Blake witnessed a rare phenomenon - a fiery blue meteorite with an orange tail that shot over the London skies. It lit up much of London and inspired a number of his paintings as well as the line in the poem 'Tyger'. 'When the stars threw down their spears/ And water'd heaven with their tears.'
page 226 : Soho, fittingly, was home to Britain's first espresso coffee bar: Moka, at 29 Frith Street. Behind the venture was a Scotsman, Maurice Ross, who bought Britain's first Gaggia machine from Pino Riservato, a travelling salesman specialising in dental equipment who was so concerned at the poor quality of coffee on offer in Britain he acquired the UK concession for the machine...
... the cult US writer William S. Burroughs, subjected the Moka to what he called 'para-psychic bombardment' - sessions of recordings and pictures. 'Now to close in on The Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there. The horrible old proprietor, his frizzy haired wife and slack jawed son, the snarling counter man. I have them and they know it.'
page 230 : In the 1960s De Hems became popular with music business people, for it was said that the bottom three places in the charts could be bought in the pub's Oyster Bar.
I saw this today, plastered on a couple of buildings in Finsbury Square. No idea what it's about, but I can imagine this image coming in handy for many presentations. Please help yourselves.
