Stack is a brilliant sounding thing - a site/service that curates magazines for you. They sell all sorts of interesting and obscure independent titles and you can sign up for a subscription where they'll send you a title every month. This is the sort of media curation all the pundits were predicting yonks ago but which only seems to be starting to emerge now. Lovely stuff. And it'll make a good Christmas gift for that hard-to-buy-for Art Director in your life.
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.
Quite often I get people from really interesting little non-profits or general good causes asking me if I could lend them some advice. And because I want to appear pleasant and my days are generally listless and empty we tend to get together and have coffee. And what they mostly ask me is:
1. We've got this website, it gets quite a lot of traffic, and we know quite a lot about the people using it, how much do you think this would be worth to an advertiser?
2. How could we get in touch with said advertiser and get them involved?
And this is where it becomes clear once again, that account planners are equipped with almost no useful knowledge whatsoever and who these people really need to talk to is a decent media planning/buying brain.
So I was wondering if there were any of you out there who might have time to lend some advice to some really smart, interesting and deserving start-up causes and businesses. Shouldn't take much time or effort but it'd be really valuable to them. I'm not sure how we'll manage it. Maybe have a monthly clinic/salon thing. Or do it via one of the plannersphere iterations. Or email. Or something. But if there's anyone up for it please let me know and we'll work something out. It'll help to save our souls.
(visual artifact above is a spot plan for Elida Gibbs Impulse from August 1983, just so you know)
also crossposted here.
Where's the British equivalent of The Daily Show? Wouldn't that be good? This is a great interview with Jon Stewart. (via Johnnie Moore.)
I love the way blogging connects you with new people. A few weeks ago Sarah from Blag magazine emailed to say hello and introduce Blag because she'd been pointed at m'blog by Stef and Tom from Big Al's. And I'd been thinking that you've all probably heard enough planners banging on about brand polyphony and such so I thought it'd be interesting to interview some people who are building a really fascinating media property. And they kindly agreed. So here it is. I will confess to be a little intimidated interviewing professional interviewers but it seemed to go OK.
Blag is created with great passion, smarts and integrity by Sally A. Edwards and Sarah J. Edwards and you can tell they love what they do, which is probably why they're very good at it. It's a top magazine, you should try and get hold of a copy. We talked about Blag, obviously, about magazines generally (including nostalgia for great magazines of the 80s/90s like Sky, early Arena, Details and Raygun) and about how they don't mind crossing and/or blurring the line between advertising and editorial because their readers are savvy enough to know what's going on and they don't carry ordinary advertising in the magazine. (I think they're working out some of the ways brands and media owners are going to have to work together in a less interruptive world). I really enjoyed it, I suspect planners don't spend enough time talking to media creators. We should do more of it. It's a bit noisy in the background because the quietest place we could find in Covent Garden was a pub and it wasn't as quiet as we'd hoped, but I still think it's listenable.
Big thanks to Sally and Sarah for the time.
We also talked about little remembered but rather splendid 80s/90s TV programme Star Test; so I thought I'd add a little bit of that from YouTube featuring my hero, Martin Fry.
There was a CSI crossover episode on 5 last night - Vegas and Miami - I love a crossover. I think my favourite was probably Homicide and Law And Order. Or The Practice and Ally McBeal.
I wonder why more programmes don't do this. Particularly those from within the same production entity. Why weren't there more interactions between the people of Camberwick Green and Trumpton? This only really started with Chigley, probably for cost-saving reasons. And why wasn't their more inter-agency co-operation between Spectrum, International Rescue and WASP? One would have hoped more joined-up world-saving would be possible by 2065.
I like the way it suggests a bigger fictional world and it's obviously something programme makers like to do - and they're seeing opportunities to do in other places. I wonder why more brands haven't done this? Or have they and I'm missing something?