Jeremy Leslie is a graphic designer and passionate advocate for editorial design, regularly writing, speaking and blogging about the subject. He is developing magCulture as a consultancy for print and digital content creation.
It’s a busy one after a week’s holiday. I’m consulting with Baeur on one of their weeklies and there’s a couple of awards judging sessions – the D&AD Magazine and Newspaper category on Tuesday and later in the week the customer magazine section of the PPA Awards. I’ll also be developing ideas for a potential series of magazine workshops for Moscow later this year, doing a radio piece about the iPad for Adrian Shaughnessy, and uploading magCulture.com/paper for printing by the Newspaper Club.
They’ve always been hugely supportive, even back when they weren’t quite clear what graphic design was. But they know now. They’re among the keenest readers of magCulture – one of the first people to point out the legibility issue with Courier on the recent redesign was my mother.
77% father, 23% mother.
Hearing. I can’t design, write or travel without music.
I can very nearly surf.
More so than I thought at the time. I was lucky to catch the end of the pre-Thatcher education utopia: student grants, small classes, tutors with time.
I have a two-finger typing style that has caused several quirks in my writing, one of which is to mis-spell magaizne every time I type it.
A conservative estimate counts over 220,000 different magazines currently published across the world.
Chelsea win the double.
I’m already on Plan H.
La Mas Bella (The Most Beautiful) is a Madrid-based project that takes the idea of a magazine to even further extremes than MK Bruce/Lee. Diego Ortiz and Pepe Murciego have produced a single issue every year since 1993 – it takes that long to produce because every issue is absolutely unique in format and content. (Read more)
Magazines are finally grasping the power of digital channels. It’s rare now to find a magazine without a website, and more and more are using social networks to create and promote content. Last year saw a rush of augmented reality projects, with magazines including US Esquire and Colors printing QR codes that launched video apps on screen with mixed results – file under ‘gimmick’. (Read more)
The handmade has made a major comeback over recent years, perhaps as a reaction to the slickness of digital communications. From Marmalade magazine’s early attempts to subvert QuarkXpress through to today’s ubiquitous paper sculpture mobile phone ads, the DIY aesthetic is a part of our times. Cut is a magazine from Munich that is dedicated to extending this DIY aesthetic beyond a visual trend to become a way of living. (Read more)
Printed magazines appeal most readily to the senses of sight and touch, sound can play a minor role according to the crispness and weight of the paper, and tasting the pages is generally best avoided, however mouth-watering the photography. Until now, though, smell has been rather overlooked.
Yes, uncoated paper can absorb large amounts of ink that give a new magazine a heavy smell that appeals to some, including me, and the scent samples in women’s titles lend them a coarse over-sweet smell. But these are incidental. (Read more)
I have five magazines to share with you this week, each of which stretch the boundaries of what a magazine can be, starting today with MK Bruce/Lee, a project created by Cape Town’s The President.
Led by designer Peet Pienaar, The President specialize in intricate pattern-orientated designs based on traditional Africaans commercial art. For MK Bruce/Lee, they’ve taken this as a starting point for an extrovert piece of print that combines foil block, photography, cartoons and pattern-making to create a multi-layered lucky dip box of goodies. (Read more)
As Thursday will see the launch of our second printed publication, we thought it apt that our weekly discussion should deal with a subject very much on our minds.
Jeremy Leslie, founder of the fantastic magCulture knows a thing or two about magazines is asking your opinion on an industry in constant flux through the recession. So, simply, which magazines do you deem worthy for praise and which are destined for the chop? Click through to let us know what you think… (Read more)
