Dépêche Mode

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Viscose Journal calls itself “a journal for fashion criticism” which sounds like a simple enough—and niche enough—premise for a magazine. Founded by Jeppe Ugelvig in Copenhagen and New York in 2021, Viscose has quickly become a vital touchpoint in the fashion world. And it has evolved into something far more complicated than what it still calls itself.

In many ways, Ugelvig and his team have created a magazine that is a pure distillation of what a magazine can be. Because every issue of the publication is different—in form and shape and style. In other words, this is a magazine without a literal template. 

The first issue was called a “bagazine” and came in the form of a crocodile skin handbag. Another issue featured a garment label. And the current issue comes with a cover in the form of a cut-out of a perfume box. 

The magazine feels like “an ongoing thought process,” not just with the subject of fashion but with the idea of making a magazine itself. And in this sense, it is a mirror not just to the disciplined anarchy of the fashion industry but also into the making of an independent magazine in the 21st century. And that means thinking about the brand, about events, about audience, about the future as a media hub. And that’s a lot of thinking.

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press.

 

Noted. (Relentlessly)

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Alex Hunting made his name as the design director of Kinfolk, the indie magazine that everyone loves, and has influenced thousands of would-be editors and art directors around the world. Which is why he was the guest on episode 17 of our sister podcast, Print is Dead (Long Live Print!). But that’s not why he’s here.

Along with Editor George Upton (also from Kinfolk), Alex has just launched Footnote, a “journal of artistic exchange,” in which writers are invited to, well, write a story which is then used as a prompt for a wide range of other writers and artists and illustrators to build and comment and add and create a magazine.

Now, this means a few things. First, Alex has no idea what will happen or how the magazine will end up. There’s planning, but there’s no flat plan, for you magazine insiders, because that comes much later in the process. And this lack of a plan includes, perhaps, potentially, the form the magazine might take. We’ll get into that.

Second, the magazine is organized via footnotes—yes, hence the name—but the footnotes are not organized as you might expect them. If there is an editorial eye, or a creative plan, it is in the arrangement of the various footnotes.

The result is baffling, stimulating, entertaining, and gorgeous. Footnote might be the most magazine-y magazine we’ve yet to present on The Full Bleed. It is a brazen experiment that plays with the idea of the magazine while being an oversized, tactile, designed editorial object. A magazine, in other words.

 

A Better-Built Magazine

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When a company publishes a magazine, or at least an “editorial” product, for whatever reason, it is called custom publishing. I have a long editorial background in custom. And custom has a surprisingly long history itself.

How long?

John Deere started publishing The Furrow in 1895. The Michelin Star started as a form of custom content: what better way to sell tires to monied Parisians than by enticing them to take a drive to the countryside to try a great restaurant?

Amex Publishing famously published Travel + Leisure among other titles for decades. That in-flight magazine you once enjoyed on your flight overseas? That, too, is custom publishing.

Now, after some down years, custom publishing is leaning waaaaay into print again. Henrybuilt is an industry leader in designing and constructing well-built products and furnishings for the home. Henrybuilt is not, however, a company that you would think is screaming for a magazine.

But the qualities that make a great magazine—attention to detail and craft, the curation of ideas, hard work—are the very qualities that have made Untapped, a “design journal that looks back to look forward.” 

Led by editor-in-chief Tiffany Jow, Untapped is a smart, well-designed magazine that avoids the pitfalls of most design journals in being free of jargon and thus accessible.

With an enviable level of editorial freedom, Jow has created an editorial product that richly explores livable spaces and champions “ideas-driven work.” The result is a growing media entity across platforms independent of Henrybuilt while hewing closely to its brand. It’s good stuff.

 

It’s Le Monde’s World, We’re Just Living In It

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Name a major newspaper—anywhere in the world—and you will find a magazine. Or two. Or three. The New York Times is the obvious example of this. The Times of London is another obvious example. And now more and more legacy newspapers from around the world are publishing their magazines in English.

La Repubblica in Italy publishes D. And now France’s venerable Le Monde is out with M International, a glossy biannual that distills their weekly M magazine for an English-speaking audience.

Long called “the newspaper of reference” in France, Le Monde occupies an oversized space in the French media. When the Olympics returned to Paris, Le Monde decided to create an english version of their newspaper for the web. Then they decided to create the magazine—in English—something that not just added an extra piece of land to their media ecosystem, but one that pleased their advertisers as well. 

We spoke to Louis Dreyfus, the CEO of Le Monde about the business case for English, how the magazines attract new readers to the newspaper, the power of print, and how AI is one of the reasons Le Monde can create in english in the first place.

 

The New, New Coffee Generation

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On today’s show we’re creating a storm in a coffee cup about everyone’s cup of joe. We’re spilling the beans about your morning brew. You’re going to hear a latte puns about your cuppa, your high-octane dirt, your jitter juice, your elixir, and by the time we’re done you will have both woken up and smelled the coffee.

Luke Adams is the editor in chief of Standart, a magazine about a bean that was first cultivated in Ethiopia in the 9th century and within a few hundred years had many of us hooked. It is a subject obviously and extravagantly rich in history, lore, and possibility. 

What it is not, however, is a paean to what Luke calls “cutting-edge coffee-making geekery.” 

Rather, Standart is about growers and roasters. It is about cafes and third spaces. It is about culture. It is, in other words, about you, the coffee drinker. It attempts to bring together a disparate potential readership around a singular subject, one that not too many actually talk about. Because while cafes encourage conversation, that conversation is rarely about what we’re drinking. Even when it’s a “damn fine cup of coffee.”

 

In the Realm of the Senses

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Psychedelia has an image problem. At least that’s what editor and journalist Hillary Brenhouse realized after she saw through the haze.

Both in art and literature, psychedelia was way more than tie-dye t-shirts and magic mushrooms. Instead of letting that idea fade into the mist, she kept thinking about it. And the more she looked, the more she realized maybe she should create a magazine to address this. And so she did.

Elastic is a magazine of psychedelic art and literature. It says so right there on the cover of the beautiful first issue that just launched. So this is not your standard issue lit or art mag. After all, this is one backed by … Harvard, and UC Berkeley, and a couple of major foundations. 

Hillary Brenhouse has learned a lot about the craft and the business of making and selling magazines this past year. Lucky for us, she and her team are quick studies. You can see it on every page of Elastic. And she also may have redefined the literary magazine. Without a single tie-dyed t-shirt or magic mushroom in the lot, man.

 

Run to the Light

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A monochromator is an optical device that separates light, like sunlight or the light from a lamp, into a range of individual wavelengths and then allows …

… Sorry. I failed physics the last time I took it and I would fail it again. I’m not telling you about my shortcomings for any reason, because a podcast about my shortcomings would be endless.

But I thought I’d look up the word when confronted with Monochromator magazine, which aims to “deconstruct selected films under a shared monochrome to reconstruct them for social relevance.” Look, that’s what it says on the website.

But when you read the magazine, you get it. This is politics and social issues filtered through big movies. How big? The first issue uses Barbie and Oppenheimer to examine the rise of American power (hard and soft).

Having said that, it’s very interesting reading and not heavy. And editor Alex Heeyeon Kil is not even sure she’s editing a film magazine. She sees Monochromator as a discussion about the real world using fictional stories, in this case movies. And her team, divided between South Korea and Germany, publish this annual magazine knowing they might step on more than a few landmines.

Strap in. Or turn on a lamp and take a look at the light and maybe you’ll understand what you’re seeing better than I ever will.

 

Every Day is Mother’s Day

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If The Full Bleed’s second season had a theme, it just might be “We Made A New Magazine During the Pandemic.”  Listen to past episodes and you’ll see that our collective and unprecedented existential crisis ended up producing a lot of magazines.

Melissa Goldstein and Natalia Rachlin met as coworkers at the lifestyle brand Nowness in the UK. Later, with Melissa in LA and Natalia in Houston, they bonded over their new status as mothers: they had given birth a day apart. 

And they both found that magazines aimed at mothers were barren. These titles spoke of babies and parenting and the decor of the baby’s room, but they rarely spoke of the moms as … people. 

So they created Mother Tongue, a fresh look at womanhood and motherhood, and a kind of reclamation of both terms. The magazine functions as a conversation between like-minded moms from everywhere. Plus, like all modern media brands, Mother Tongue has great merch. 

The election looms large, of course, over the magazine and our discussion—we spoke a week after it—and let’s just say both Melissa and Natalia were still processing the results. But Mother Tongue is not going to shy away from talking about that either.

 

A Weed Grows in Portland

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Anja Charbonneau would be the first to admit she didn’t have a strategy in mind when she launched her dreamy celebration of all things marijuana, Broccoli magazine, back in 2016. Having worked as a freelance photographer and writer, and then as Creative Director of lifestyle favorite Kinfolk, she started Broccoli with the simple idea to explore Portland’s then burgeoning cannabis scene and its culture.

Fast forward to today: Anja Charbonneau oversees a publishing conglomerate that produces a number of magazines, books, and something called “oracle cards”—while also spearheading an advocacy group, and a whole lot more. 

If anything has changed, ironically, it’s that the last edition of Broccoli was the last edition of Broccoli. Yes, there are new magazines on the way, and new books, and new ideas to explore, because Anja Charbonneau does not sit still, even while sitting atop her nascent empire.

From cats to mushrooms to artful snails to all things celestial, Broccoli publishes stuff that tastes great and that’s good for you and your soul.

 

They’re Fixin’ to Change Your Mind

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The people behind The Bitter Southerner are many things but they are not, they will remind you, actually bitter. The tongue is planted quite firmly in the cheek here. But The Bitter Southerner is, for sure, like it says on the website, “a beacon for the American South and a bellwether for the nation.” 

Sure, why not.

But what started out as an ambitious e-newsletter has evolved now into a … project. Read The Bitter Southerner and you realize how ambitious and radical their business—and message—truly is. This is not just a brand but a movement, a way to talk about the South and Southern things, but through a lens many of us, through our own biases and ignorance, won’t quite see. 

And the world is listening. Stories from The Bitter Southerner have either won or been nominated for eight James Beard Awards. And now they are up for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. 

We spoke to co-founder Kyle Tibbs Jones about the genesis of the magazine, about what it means, about the community it has found and spawned, and about the future, not just of the brand but, maybe, of the South, and where The Bitter Southerner fits into it all.

 

WTF is AFM?

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Feeld is a dating app “for the curious” and its users are an adventurous, thoughtful bunch. And Feeld is also a tech company that happens to be led by thoughtful long-term types who see the value in print as a cornerstone for their community of customers. Enter A Fucking Magazine.

Led by editors Maria Dimitrova and Haley Mlotek, AFM is a cultural magazine about sex that is also not about sex. Maybe it’s about everything. Or maybe my old lit prof in college was right and everything really is about sex. The first issue of the magazine is out and it demands attention because it is beautiful and smart and literate. And also because it feels like something new.

Discussions about AFM also lead to discussions about custom publishing: There is no hiding Feeld in the pages of AFM. All of the money behind the magazine is from Feeld, and half the contributors are also users of the app. Customers, in other words.

As someone who came out of the custom world, I have long said the best custom media were the products of brands that were confident and forward thinking; when a brand saw itself more as patron and less as custodian. Meaning they didn’t get overly involved.

Luckily, the higher ups at Feeld are relatively hands off, and allow Maria and Haley to do their thing. Which is very fucking smart.

 

The Rest of the Story

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Most people in the world live in what we in the west sometimes dismissively call the “rest of the world.” Depending on where you live, “the rest” probably includes parts, if not all, of Latin America, Africa, and the vast majority of Asia. Much like the tendency of Americans to call the champions of their sports leagues “world champions,” the word “world” is never what it seems.

Except when it is.

Founded as a non-profit by Sophie Schmidt in 2020, Rest of World is meant to challenge the “expectations about whose experiences with technology matter,” as its mission states. With a global editorial team led by today’s guest Anup Kaphle, Rest of World’s emphasis on the technological transformation of the daily lives of billions of people is eye-opening, educational, entertaining, and fills in the gaps in our general understanding of how technology is used everywhere. When it won a National Magazine Award last year, one sensed that it had finally arrived to a broader audience.

The rest of the world is a big place, perhaps too big for a paper magazine. That’s why Rest of World is digital.

Those in the “west” would be better served by understanding it. Because everything and everyone is, ultimately, connected.

 

Every Day Is Mother’s Day

/
 

If The Full Bleed’s second season had a theme, it just might be “We Made A New Magazine During the Pandemic.”  Listen to past episodes and you’ll see that our collective and unprecedented existential crisis ended up producing a lot of magazines.

Melissa Goldstein and Natalia Rachlin met as coworkers at the lifestyle brand Nowness in the UK. Later, with Melissa in LA and Natalia in Houston, they bonded over their new status as mothers: they had given birth a day apart. 

And they both found that magazines aimed at mothers were barren. These titles spoke of babies and parenting and the decor of the baby’s room, but they rarely spoke of the moms as … people. 

So they created Mother Tongue, a fresh look at womanhood and motherhood, and a kind of reclamation of both terms. The magazine functions as a conversation between like-minded moms from everywhere. Plus, like all modern media brands, Mother Tongue has great merch. 

The election looms large, of course, over the magazine and our discussion—we spoke a week after it—and let’s just say both Melissa and Natalia were still processing the results. But Mother Tongue is not going to shy away from talking about that either.

 

Imagine Friendsgiving as a Magazine

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The pandemic hit New York first and harder and longer than most places. And as a New Yorker, Joshua Glass was appalled by the eerily quiet and empty city that resulted. He wanted to connect with people, any people, but he wanted quality gatherings, as opposed to quantity. 

When restrictions on gatherings began to ease up, he started curating a series of dinner parties around town. And these get-togethers led to the creation of Family Style, a media brand that brought all his interests under a single, and perhaps singular, cultural umbrella. 

The result is, finally, what the people at those highly-curated, and probably well-dressed, dinner parties talked about—and the magazine is the core of a growing brand that encompasses production, events, digital, and social. 

Family Style is a magazine at the intersection of food and culture—an interesting magazine about interesting people interested in interesting things, all united by a kind of global glossy aesthetic. 

So is Family Style a fashion magazine, a culture magazine, a food magazine, or an arts journal? The answer is “yes.”

 

The Heart of Rock & Roll Is Still Beating

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There’s a saying about the Velvet Underground’s first album: it didn’t sell a lot of copies but everyone who bought it went on to form a band. Not everyone who read Creem went on to form a band, but almost everyone who ever wrote about rock music in a significant way has a connection to Creem. 

Founded in Detroit in 1969 by Barry Kramer, Creem was a finger in the eye to the more established Rolling Stone. Creem called itself “America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine” and its cheeky irreverence matched its devotion to its infamous street cred. Punk, new wave, heavy metal, alternative, indie were all championed at Creem.

Writers and editors who worked for Creem read like a who’s who of industry legends: Lester Bangs. Dave Marsh. Robert Christgau. Greil Marcus. Patti Smith. Cameron Crowe. Jann Uhelszki. Penny Valentine. And on and on and on.

The magazine stopped publishing in 1989 a few years after Barry’s death. A documentary about Creem’s heyday in 2020 helped lead to a resurrected media brand, founded by JJ Kramer, Barry’s son, and launched in 2022. The copy on the first issue’s cover: “Rock is Dead. So is Print.”

Totally typical Creem-assed fuckery. And still totally rock n roll, man.

 

Farm-to-Newsstand Publishing

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The pandemic screwed a lot of businesses over, but it did a real number on the restaurant industry. Beset by low margins at the best of times, Covid was to the business what a neglected pot of boiling milk is to your stove top. But Max Meighen, a restaurant owner in Toronto decided to fill in his down time by … creating a magazine. Because of course he did.

And so he cooked up Serviette, a magazine about food that feels and looks and reads unlike any other food title around.

Nicola Hamilton came on as Creative Director soon thereafter. She had worked for a number of Canadian titles and during Covid, founded Issues Magazine Shop, one of Canada’s—if not the world’s—leading independent magazine shops. Because of course she did.

Food magazines, like all media, have gone through a lot recently, and the changes wrought by digital media have been amplified by Influencers, TikTokers, Instagram recipe makers, Substackers, bloggers, you name it. The food industry is ruthless and not for the weak. And I think you’ll find that both Max and Nicola are anything but. They are, quite simply, Master Chefs.

 

The Roads Less Traveled

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Much of travel media comes with a kind of sheen to it. A gloss. Whether you are traveling Italy with a hungry celebrity or cruising Alaska in the pages of a magazine, the photos are big and Photoshopped, the text kind of breathless. And while Afar has plenty of both, it just feels a bit different. It is not a magazine that puts a focus on consumption but on feeling. On the experience of travel.

Julia Cosgrove has been atop Afar’s masthead from the beginning. She comes from a magazine and journalism family. And despite their warnings about the industry, she joined the family business anyway because what kid listens to their parents? When the founders of Afar Media plucked her out of ReadyMade magazine and told her that no other travel magazine felt experiential to them, she understood and joined the team.

Travel media has changed a lot over the years. One has to ask what moves a media consumer more: a magazine article about a beach in Croatia or the TikToks of numerous influencers on that same beach, extolling its virtues, reaching their millions of fans?

Afar doesn’t care. Because it believes in its mission and marches on, now in its 15th year, inviting its readers to experience the world, by diving in.

 

Not the Safe Choice

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Most magazines are not political. Unless, that is, you create a bilingual Arabic-English language magazine about design out of Beirut. Or another bilingual magazine about women and gender—also out of Beirut. Then, perhaps, your intentions are a bit less opaque.

Maya Moumne is a Lebanese designer by training who now divides her time between Beirut and Montréal. She is the editor and co-creator of Journal Safar and Al Hayya, two magazines that attempt to capture the breadth and diversity of what we inaccurately—monolithically—call “the Arab World.” Both magazines are also examples of tremendous design and, frankly, bravery.

The subject-matter on display here means the magazines have limited distribution in the very region they cover—which is both ironic and the exact reason the magazines exist. That both have also been noticed and fêted by magazine insiders in the West is perhaps also something worth celebrating.

Maya Moumne is a designer. Of the possibilities for a better and more inclusive future for everyone, everywhere.

(Production note: This conversation was recorded last month prior to the violence in Lebanon. We send our best wishes to the staff of Journal Safar and Al Hayya and hope they are safe. And mostly we wish for a peaceful future for all.)

 

Good Trouble

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Troublemakers is a magazine about society’s misfits. At least from the Japanese point of view. A bilingual, English/Japanese magazine, Troublemakers came about as a way to showcase people who were different, who stayed true to themselves, or about the long road those people had taken to self-acceptance.

The founders, editor Yuto Miyamoto and art director Manami Inoue, were inspired by a notion that Japanese culture perhaps did not value those who strayed too far from the herd.

The magazine has been a success not just in Japan but globally, and perhaps mirrors a trend we see in streaming, for example, of a general public acceptance of universal stories from different places—gengo nanté kinishee ni. Think, especially, of the success of Japanese television and movies like Shogun or Tokyo Vice or Godzilla Minus One. Of Japanese Pop and anime and food. It’s an endless list.

But Troublemakers is more than just a cultural document. It is proof of something shared, a commonality of human experience that exists everywhere. Speaking to Yuto and Manami, you sense a desire—and an invitation—to connect. With everyone. And that’s, ultimately, what Troublemakers tries to do.

 

A Life of Slice

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What happens when a pastry chef meets a magazine editor in Brooklyn? No, this isn’t the setup for a joke that perhaps three people might ever find funny. But…what do you get when a pastry chef meets a magazine editor in Brooklyn?

You get the start of a media brand and a movement and a community. In other words, you get Cake Zine.

Started as a post-pandemic stab at reconnecting with the world, Cake Zine is the result of that meet-cute. Tanya Bush, the pastry chef, and Aliza Abarbanel, a magazine editor, took their love of sweets and have created a magazine that is kind of like what you might get if a literary magazine developed a sweet tooth.

And threw great parties.

Not just in Brooklyn, but in LA, and London, and Paris. And that might become, who knows, not just a new sort of literary salon, but an actual salon. Or cake shop/wine bar. Or a publisher.

Tanya and Aliza have plans—perhaps too many—but for now, they are content with creating a smart and tasty magazine that blends fiction, essays, and recipes in a lovingly-blended, skillfully-layered cake.

And. They. Have. Plans.

But they are also realists and wise enough to know that you can’t rush a soufflé. Lest it collapse. Much like these tortured, yeasty metaphors.