The seventh issue of Steven Gregor’s excellent Gym Class Magazine is about to come out, and I’m very happy to have contributed to it in the form of a short interview with composer Shigeru Umebayashi (In the Mood for Love, House of Flying Daggers, A Single Man).
The cover feature is an interview with legendary Esquire cover art director George Lois by Andrew Losowsky (Magtastic Blogsplosion), and GCM 7’s cover — an homage/wink at a classic Esquire cover — was also Andrew’s idea.
I’ve quite enjoyed reading the digital version of Andrew‘s Stranded magazine — see my previous posts here and here — and so far my favorite part is the series of failed assignments. They all have the basic design layout you see pictured — which I love — and include the original email from Andrew to the potential contributor on his or her assignment for the magazine, and then below you get a follow-up on why it was not completed. There are different cases — some were able to find a flight, others simply drifted out of contact.
What I especially like about these is that they give you a behind-the-scenes peek at the production process of the project, while at the same time remaining on-topic — it makes you realize how some people were able to quickly get back home, while others were not.
Some good news if you were waiting for the digital version of Andrew Losowsky’s Stranded one-shot magazine, as it’s now available for purchase through Zinio for $5 — as with the print version, all proceeds go to the International Rescue Committee.
Over at Magtastic Blogsplosion, Andrew goes over a few examples of magazines that have been produced using blog content — mentioned are of course Michael Bojkowski’s Lineread and Jeremy Leslie’s magCulture.com/PAPER (pictured). Although not mentioned, It’s Nice That is another great example of this — and hey, issue 4 just came out.
It’s certainly a proposition that makes sense — as Andrew lays out, with print-on-demand services taking care of printing and distribution, all a budding magazine creator needs these days are the words and the design, and a good blog can take care of the former (with a bit of reformatting, expansion, etc.) It’s definitely something that comes to mind when I think of SNOW Magazine, and what I could do to expand on the site.
And while I mention Andrew’s Stranded, you should also drop by the Magtastic Blogsplosion for his interview with Ivan Pope, the founder of the new online indie magazine shop, Magazero. Pope is a vet of the net and magazine scene, and the inventory he’s building (and it’s still expanding) is already quite impressive.
On April 14th 2010, the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano closed European airspace. Thousands of people were stranded all over the world.
Andrew Losowsky was one of them, stuck in Dublin, trying to get to the States. A few days in, he had an idea. He put out a call for others stranded around the world and invited them to make a magazine.
That’s pretty much what you need to know about Stranded, and the issue has just been released through MagCloud — Andrew promises that a digital Zinio edition will come out in about a week. The magazine was designed by Matt McArthur (he was stuck in New York), and is packed with stranded-relatd stories from all over. Note also that all proceeds go to the International Rescue Committee.