We Love Magazines!

Article from Japanese online design magazine PingMag. This is an interview with Jermemy Leslie author of the magculture blog He regularly contributes to the design press and is co-curator of Colophon2007.


We Love Magazines!
PingMag is a web magazine - but we certainly do love printed magazines too!

With the spread of the WWW, online magazines aka blogs have become so common and you easily get a whole magazine as PDF on the way. That might be convenient for you net addicts who don’t even find the time to order the real printed thing at Amazon anymore. However, just when we slightly started to worry about the future of print magazines, a great book called We Love Magazines which features 1,100 pop culture mags for true magazine lovers, has been published. Today PingMag asks Jeremy Leslie from John Brown who art directed the book about the future of print.

Written by Chiemi

“We Love Magazine”, edited by Andrew Losowsky and distributed worldwide by Die Gestalten Verlag in March 2007, featuring 1,100 international pop culture mags.

So Jeremy, Could you explain how this book “We Love Magazine” itself was published?

This was published as a record of a symposium about magazines called Colophon2007, which was held in Luxembourg in March. Myself, Mike Koedinger and Andrew Losowsky came up with the idea of this symposium and we also wanted to do something that remained after the event. So we came up with the idea of a book. The purpose of this symposium was to help independent publishers meet each other and exchange information. Also, we wanted to encourage everybody to help each other making magazines. In the end, we had lots of good speakers, lots of events and 2,000 people joined our symposium.


Conference at Colophon 2007. (Photo by Eric Chenal)

What kind of issues were discussed there?

Though there were lots of things that were talked about, the end of print was always in the agenda. Nearly every time there was someone saying that print will end up online. For example, David Renard, author of The Last Magazine, was the latest voice to argue that big mainstream magazines will stop printing and all the small magazines will carry on to print. I think that is quite an interesting argument. If you transfer that to the book area it will be easier to understand. You can think of two types of books: cheap ones for reading during your holidays, which might not be particularly good-looking but do their job. The other type has a hard cover and is beautifully produced, such as an art or photography book. In short, magazines, like weekly news magazines and gossip magazines will end up online. Whereas small magazines will be more sophisticated and more beautifully printed and will become more expensive.

So what do you think about that issue?

I have my own blog called MagCulture.com and I’am involved with some web magazines too. It’s very easy to write short texts on blogs and press publish. But sometimes you want to be a bit more considered by spending more time to write, rewrite and leave it for a couple of days to write again. And when you put it into print, then it is done. So there is a more serious feeling to it. But this doesn’t mean web is bad. The internet is still in a very basic stage and we’ve seen it changing a lot within the last 10 years. I’m sure it will change even more. Both has its advantages and disadvantages. But from lots of reasons, such as the environmental problem with paper wastage, there will be less print magazines in the end.

Magazines symposium Colophon 2007 in Luxembourg. (Photo by Eric Chenal)

What part have magazines in people’s lifes?

There are two key roles: if you work in any kind of creative industry you tend to take it too serious, but for most of the people magazines are mere entertainment. It is the same with television and movies. My other point of view would be that they reflect trends very well, both in terms of content and their looks. There was a time when record sleeves and CD covers were the barometers of how creativity was advanced. I think that now magazines are doing exactly that.

Spread from “We Love Magazines”, introducing Japanese fashion magazines “Street”, “Fruits” and “Tune”. From these three magazines you can tell the international fashion trends.

So what makes good print magazine?

Making magazines is a very specialized thing. Even for designers it takes a while to learn. But to make a good magazine, as a designer, you do influence and contribute to the content too. As an editor, you influence and contribute to the design as well. The key for me is that design and content are absolutely aligned and united. You can sense whether the makers of a magazine are enjoying it or not and you can see it when you leaf through the pages. That is personality!

Spread from “We Love Magazines”. This one is about Yummy magazine from France.

“Omagiu” magazine from Romania gives you both stylish design and interesting content. Also taken from “We Love Magazines”.

What is the most exciting magazine for you at the moment?

Most magazines I love are small independent titles. The first one is Kasino A4 which is a magazine from Helsinki, Finland. They have an interview with a classical musician from Finland and they also have fashion story. They don’t take it too seriously and just make a nice and enjoyable magazine. Another great magazine is Rojo from Barcelona. They never have much words but mainly artwork. A very beautiful magazine! And there’s this similar project called Draft from the UK. It is done by one guy from London. He is a museum curator and features art work he commissioned from unknown to famous artists. Besides the many beautiful images it’s an interesting magazine, too.

How about the best magazine you can think of in magazine history?

That’s a very unfair question! (laughs) But hmmm… I would say an American magazine called Speak, published in the 90s. It wasn’t following other people’s agendas such as the latest music and latest film trends. Though they covered music and literature and ran short stories, they set their own agendas with a completely unique view of the world. It was published by a guy called Dan Rolleri and designed by Martin Venezky, a very good designer. The two of them had a fantastic working relationship and made beautiful pages.

Left: Kasino A4 from Helsinki offers all different kind of contents, basically what they personally like most.
Right: Beautiful: Rojo magazine from Barcelona, published in 2001. ROJO®seis cover artwork by MWM.

Left: The cover of Issue 4 of UK’s Draft is designed by Julian Opie.
Right: America’s Speak is the best mag according to Jeremy!

Finally, what do you expect for the future of print mags?

I would like to make it easier for people to come up with an idea and simply make it and distribute it - as that is the big problem for many. Also, there are lots of magazines you can’t get at the stores. And I think magazines should stop being so scared of being different. Too many magazines have become too big and are too frightened of losing money. I look forward to them being more daring to be different.

Jeremy, it was very interesting to hear your opinion today. Thank you very much! We are also looking forward to see more exciting print magazines from all over the world. If you have your own opinion about the future of mags, please leave a comment. Tell us!