With the unfair unveiling of the bi-annual LOVE in the UK, I am spurred to (a) cry and beat my fists in vain (b) pout and kick around my boring old american mags (c) petition for someone in the UK to send me a copy and dream of my very own magazine mini shop. Obvs it would include LOVE...and POP...and FACE....PURPLE...Paris Vogue...Phantom Paris Teen Vogue...UK Elle...ID...AnOther; maybe even a cardboard cut out of Katie Grand for aesthetics. HRM! all mags from off yonder. Why could this desire be? Maybe because, among other casualties of the economic fuck up, american magazines and american print individuality are suffering leaving huge swaths of culturally attuned social groups with out print diaries that both speak to and with them. Magazines are a specialized form of media, they have the ability to be as finite as possible, which act as and reflect a cultural barometer and encouraging the fissure and generation of ideas. A large swath of people will still, like myself, and those in the 'creative arts', seek out tangible glossy full bleed papers, but they will have to source them in other locations that are not exactly speaking directly to the end viewer. Additionally, seemingly without fail...well often inevitably WITH fail... groups of design minded youth imagine and spread 'zines through out the sub cultural channels. Idealistically, we would mash up corporate conglomerates with trend forward youth zin-ies and a specific, driven, consumable iteration of culture would be available to feed brains every where. Though, the underlying values of the two parties are in such opposition that a group meeting that did not result in blood shed would be a miracle of biblical proportions. Likely, or hopefully, with increased globalization we will have global iterations of our mainstay magazines that will then have enough money to subsidize 'continental' specific editions filtering into increasingly more unique area of interest. Magazine distribution channels mimicking early early newspaper propagation..except with better quality of paper and foxier moddles. I mean look, we even have our own modern (critiques of) yellow journalism! Until then, I'll just have to re-read and rely on local museums aggregating super publications on my behalf.
Jez does a great take on the recent upswing in Katie Grand interviews and the love over LOVE. Including some choice quotes from Grand herself, "‘‘I think as an editor you have a responsibility to do an interesting, commercial magazine that people want to look at. We need a readership as well as advertisers,"...''with the economy as it is, I wanted to do something that was a reality check on many levels.''" word up kitties.
