Archive for the ‘Magazines’ Category
Mobile Dubai – Open Skies
In Magazines, Online on May 8, 2012 at 4:08 pm
Yes, we are up at the top of the Burj Khalifa for the Dubai issue of Open Skies. We have created a mobile office over floors 152, 153, and 154 – the highest office space in the world. We are interviewing some of the more interesting residents of the city, blogging, tweeting and filming our experiences there. We are also hosting a cool party next week with Emirates and Emaar. All good fun, and it looks like the issue is shaping up very well. Follow our antics here and here.
April Readage…
In Books, Design, Magazines on April 30, 2012 at 7:28 pm
John Updike – Rabbit Run
Seth Godin – Small is the New Big
Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea
George Plimpton – Paper Lion
Stewart Pinkerton – The Fall of the House of Forbes
Masha Gessen – The Man Without A Face
Note: The Nausea cover was used as an inspiration for an article opener (below) in the April issue of Open Skies about the man-eating lions of Tsavo. Thanks to Roui Francisco for the execution.
Forbes vs Seth
In Books, Magazines on April 20, 2012 at 4:52 pmJust finished an interesting book, The Fall of the House of Forbes, on Forbes Magazine. Although it starts off slowly, the author spending far too long going over the spending habits of the various Forbes brothers, it does provide a warning to media companies that don’t get the internet. Forbes certainly never did, turning the website into a content farm and seeing the print product disintegrate, as competitors such as Bloomberg kept improving. The book also charts the rather bizarre forays into international licensing, including an Arabic version based in Dubai. Will Forbes ever get back to where it was? Probably not. For anyone interested in the publishing business, this, despite the slightly annoying tone, is well worth a read.
The polar opposite of the Forbes brothers is Seth Godin and I half-way through another of his books – Small is the New Big. A collection of his blog posts, it’s brilliant stuff, as he continues to adapt to the changing economy. Follow his blog. If the Forbes brothers had taken some of his advice, they would probably be in a much better situation today.
Speaking of the changing economy, The Dubai 50 is out on Kindle here and here. Soon to be on all e-reader devices.
April Open Skies…
In Design, Magazines on March 31, 2012 at 2:04 pm
The April ‘Animals’ issue of Open Skies is on board now. Probably the most innovative cover we have done, as we got it shot by Aled Lewis, whose style is unique. Next month: The Underground issue.
New projects…
In Books, Magazines, Online on February 17, 2012 at 7:11 am
Three new projects to be launched in the next two months. Two are print projects, one is web-based – all will change the future of the world make me feel better. For details on the new magazine we are launching, We Are Here, check out a hastily put together Facebook page. A visual clue to the other project above. The third, web-based project, will be about my sordid obsession with books.
Spanish Esquire
In Design, Magazines on February 12, 2012 at 7:29 pm
Very brave to print the same George Lois 1968 cover in the latest Spanish Esquire. But then, the Spanish (and Russian) version of the magazine are always brave and brilliant with their cover execution.
February Open Skies – The Making of a Cover
In Design, Magazines on February 1, 2012 at 3:52 pm
We are getting some web love regarding the February cover of Open Skies, which is all the more gratifying given it’s the first cover we have done in-house. The process was as follows: I started off wanting to use a particular type of yellow as we had not used it before on the cover (and the last time we used yellow at all was in issue one back in March last year). This is the first time I have started the cover process with a colour, but I was determined to make this shade of yellow work.
There are two types of covers you can have with a themed issue (as all our issues are). A cover that relates to the general theme of the issue (see here) or one that focuses on a specific article within the issue (see here). Most of our covers focus on the general theme – as we are not on the news stand, we don’t have to rely on multiple cover lines to grab attention, and if you focus on one feature on the cover, you will need a cover line.
For this issue, I wanted to do something different – to focus on some of the features inside the issue without being too explicit about those features. So, inspired by the buttons on the Sony Playstation handset, I asked Roui (our ace designer) to come up with some logos. The DeLorean car was easy, the Super Mario Bros. icon was also self evident. For the Silicon Valley piece, we went with a retro Apple Mac, and the final logo is from the design of the Tim Ferriss piece, which happened pretty late in the day.
Roui then added a filter to the icons to give them a slightly retro look (nothing worse than a tech cover full of shine and ‘newness’) and placed them on the page. I like to keep things minimal whenever possible, and so shrunk the icons and added a no-fuss/no serif font. It is tempting to be too clever on the cover page when it comes to the cover line, so we kept it simple: The Technology Issue. We had few other options we sent to Emirates, but they also preferred this version.
And there it is, one of the best parts of the job, choosing a cover. Next month (Our London issue) will see us doing something completely different again. Stay tuned.
Creme Brule
In Design, Magazines on January 27, 2012 at 4:55 pmFor every article praising Tyler Brule, there is one criticizing him. It’s not hard to see why – his persona is based on exclusivity, not something that plays well in the current economic climate. Yet it’s because of the current economic situation that Brule should be applauded. His success in creating Monocle and more recently, his launch of the Monocle 24 radio station is remarkable. In a shaky print market, he has put premium content to the forefront and demonstrated why quality print is still relevant. I just picked up the latest issue of Monocle and its brilliant – a mix of style, politics, design and reportage. The world needs more magazines like Monocle, and more entrepreneurs like Tyler Brule.
