29 posts tagged “magazine”

I’m sure this website is breaking some copyright laws, unless the owners of these magazines have allowed their content to be put online. You can never tell with Red China.
   Still, from a consumer point-of-view, it makes for an interesting research resource, and how Red China has opened up since Mao.
   We are talking some amazing, thick volumes here—fashionistas should check this out.

The latest Ashes to Ashes video on YouTube goes behind the scenes of a Radio Times cover shoot. The poster has put the original clip (when DI Drake meets the gang in 1981) at the end.

[Cross-posted] I’ve had to keep this under wraps till today, but since we’re about three weeks from launch, I now have permission to let you all know of this nice development at Lucire: the launch of a new magazine, Twinpalms Lucire, for a specialist market in Thailand.
   It’s been such a smooth process working with Miguel, who has done a huge load of work on the new print magazine. And I take my hat off to Twinpalms Phuket, which has been very accommodating of our own wishes. The Twinpalms brand appears first for various historical and contractual reasons.
   Richard Machado’s first shoot for Lucire, ‘Papillon’, re-appears on the cover.
   If you look inside the magazine, Miguel is very much a proponent of the Swiss grid and Helvetica is the main typeface. It’s very different in feel to Lucire in other countries, but I still love what he has done. It’s a classy, elegant production.
   There are plenty more articles saved up for the next issue, too. We plan on the title being six-monthly.

Lucire launches in Thailand

International fashion magazine collaborates with Twinpalms Phuket and Asia Design Consultants for latest country

Lucire, the international fashion magazine headquartered in New Zealand, has announced that it has collaborated with the Twinpalms Phuket resort and Asia Design Consultants Ltd. to see an extra print edition in Thailand.
   Twinpalms Lucire launches February 20 with 5,000 copies distributed through the Surin Beach, Phuket resort and its sister properties.
   The magazine has features on fashion, lifestyle and travel, with a lesser emphasis on beauty when compared to Lucire’s other print editions.
   Miguel Kirjon of Asia Design Consultants oversaw the production and editorial mix, in collaboration with Lucire founder and publisher Jack Yan, deputy editor Sylvia Giles and assistants Dominique Whittaker and Ashleigh Berry.
   Many of the Lucire articles had been commissioned by Laura Ming-Wong, the magazine’s editor in New Zealand.
   Mr Yan says, ‘This is another small step in growing the Lucire brand, targeting it at an aspirational audience that says, “I want to be a step ahead.” We’re confident that the Twinpalms audience will love our mixture and socially responsible approach to fashion and lifestyle reporting.
   ‘I’m also delighted that Miguel has created a unique look founded in the Swiss school of design. It’s very different from the home edition and it’s a classy production.’
   In addition to its design direction, Mr Kirjon has commissioned many additional, original articles for the Twinpalms’ side of the magazine.
   Twinpalms Phuket is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, one of the most exclusive collectives of hotel properties internationally. The resort is privately owned, with a private beach club and an enviable location next to Millionaires’ Cove.
   Lucire started as an online fashion magazine in 1997 and is notable for having diversified into print, rather than adopt the print-to-web approach of its competitors. Its Webby-nominated website remains a popular destination for fashion leaders, while the print magazine is regarded as a luxurious and socially responsible publication.

There are a lot of connections between myself, Stanley Moss, Pierre d’Huy, Lucire and the Medinge Group. Rather than explain things too much, I’d like to share some photos that won’t be in a future Lucire from Stanley, who serves as its travel editor. This was from a road trip in Arizona, passing the red rocks at Sedona, back in the late summer and early autumn.

Stan_pierre_sedona

Rules of the West

Allen_pierre 2

Condé Nast Portfolio November 2007

Every now and then, there’s a magazine that captures my imagination. In 1988, it was Autocar; by the early 1990s, it was Wired, then Fast Company by the end of the decade. Now, the magazine (other than any I publish!) is Condé Nast Portfolio.
   I’m annoyed that, like Business Week, Portfolio is next to impossible to get in New Zealand, though Advance can count on me as a subscriber now. As a business magazine, it is intelligently written and beautifully presented: think of it as Business Week meets The Atlantic Monthly. Design-wise, it’s a tad over-ornamented and olde worlde American, but that text typeface is beautiful and I could read it all day. It is intelligently written, but not in an inaccessible way—like the Atlantic.
   Lucky Yanks can subscribe for a dollar a month whereas I have to pay the full US$60 to get them Down Under, but at around NZ$7 an issue, it’s not a lot to ask. Postage alone won’t cover that seven bucks, and I should know.

Vogue India cover

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[Cross-posted] As someone who has long championed the Asian subcontinent—and Lucire has been linking Indian and Pakistani sites as they came to light over the years—I was happy to see that Vogue India has made it on to newsstands. The new magazine is a milestone in the rise of the subcontinental fashion industry, which arguably has had a longer tradition than anything in the occident. It also signals a rise in global luxury brands entering India—something which I hope will soon be more of a two-day street.
   The cover, too, addresses concerns that I expressed in a blog post last week, on the ubiquity of the white model on catwalks. There has been some chatter about why Gemma Ward, a blonde, blue-eyed model, occupies a third of the cover, but the answer is fairly simple, I thought: Vogue India is evidently a magazine that appeals to the global nature of the Indian consumer. Her presence suggests that in a shot. But the international girl is usually quite desirable from a publisher’s or licensee’s eyes, too.
   As a man, I have to say that my eyes went to the other models first: Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra, Monikangana Dutta, Preity Zinta and Laxmi Menon grace the cover and gatefold, photographed by Patrick Demarchelier. Perhaps it is the ubiquity that I wrote about, but the south Asian models are stunning.
   The domestic cover girl is very important, as we learned with Lucire Romania. The original cover girl—Karen Carreño—made less of an impact than the first Romanian to appear, Monica Gabor. 
   South Asia is a region that I am keen on getting in to with Lucire. My best wishes go to Priya Tanna and her team at Vogue India.

Condé Nast tells me that the September Vogue has 840 pp., 727 of them ads.
   I know folks love the thick September issues, but do readers believe there is an ideal ratio between content and ads? I usually go for five to three, but this next Vogue is one to seven.
   The mag will weigh 2·07 kg (4 lb 9 oz) and is the record-holder for advertising pages in a consumer magazine.

Regardless of politics, I still feel this is one of those classic typographic works on a par with some of the best US designs of the 1960s. I immediately think of the greats like Milton Glaser.

Hopped over to Magnetix with Monica (assistant) today to find that the good old Observer newspaper has returned to their shelves.
   For ages, Magnetix did not have Pommy newspapers, either the qualities or the tabloids. There was an absence as the qualities began reducing their size, and I have a feeling the importer did not want us regular Kiwis to know that Great Britain no longer had broadsheets. What would happen if we thought their newspapers had all reduced to Euro-sized tabloids and Berliners? Shock! We might think that Britain had joined the Common Market!
   The dailies began disappearing. Then the Sunday papers. As each broadsheet ceased publication in its larger size, there were no more on sale here.
   It was surprising that the Guardian group papers went, too, since they have tended to be at the forefront of good design for many years—first with the Pentagram redesign (someone once said the adoption of Helvetica made it fascist-looking), then with the commissioning of the Guardian family of typefaces from my friends Christian Schwartz (who started in licensing digital type around the same time I did) and Paul Barnes (whom I do not know as well).
   When I wrote an article on The Guardian’s most recent redesign for Desktop in Australia, I had to ask Christian to send me electronic examples, rather than hop down to the local store to buy a copy and scan samples. OK, so I saved myself a bit of money, but there’s still that satisfying feeling being able to see someone’s work in the medium it was intended for.
   Now, bring back The Times—or will the sight of that in tabloid format shock us Kiwis too much?