We Make Mags

Nice idea from fashion retailer LK Bennett to get involved in a supplement produced by InStyle magazine. My old Scotland on Sunday colleague and editor of InStyle Eilidh MackAskill, says the 24 page large format supplement, labelled Get Smart, will be a “huge hit” with InStyle readers. Good business sense for LK Bennett too. Distributed free in seven locations in London, it is aimed at working women. Continue reading ‘Too good to be free’

With Tesco about to enter the consumer magazine market, I’m thinking Waitrose may not be far behind.

Take these offerings in print from a recent visit to the upmarket supermarket chain. Waitrose Kitchen, now up to issue two, doing what I thought Waitrose Food Illustrated was supposed to do. Then a tabloid newspaper called Waitrose Weekend, with the future king on the front. Most people would happily pay £3 for Waitrose Kitchen, it’s as good as any commercial food mag out there, but it’s only a quid – and free to John Lewis card holders!

I guess the winners are companies like ours – CMYK – who are happy to publish magazines on other people’s behalf if the price is right. John Brown do all the Waitrose titles, having successfully sold their ailing Food Illustrated title to them some years back. Looks like a newly founded company Catmags Communications will be producing the magazines for Tesco. Not sure why the supermarkets don’t do what Jamie Oliver did, and start their own publishing company. Only a matter of time I guess.

Well, Vintage at Goodwood is over now, but I did enjoy searching out prime examples of vintage British magazines to reflect the decades. I said I would put up some spreads, so here they are.

I love this one from Ideal Home from the sixties. An interview with Liberty window dresser, Roy Gentry. Is his home as nice as his window displays?

More from Ideal Home.

Great one from Oz in the seventies about drug misuse, with illustrations from the “lovely” Peter Till.

Another from Oz, and an article from the late, great John Peel.

Up to the eighties now, and Blitz.

Some fashion from Blitz. It’s all coming back I’m told!

See earlier post for the covers.

I must admit, I thought hotels nowadays sourced  local magazines for their rooms. However, it seems that some hotels actually publish their own – what’s more they name them after existing titles like Cosmopolitan! See this post from HotelChatter.com We’ll keep an eye out for their forthcoming selection of the genre and post a link to it nearer the time.

Some more hotel magazines to look at, courtesy of HotelChatter.com. Makes us want to go on holiday. Now.

So, Vintage at Goodwood kicks off today, and our trip down magazine memory lane comes to an end in the 80s, with a copy of Blitz magazine.

Wrongly accused as a pale imitation of The Face, Blitz was a great reflection of the time, as this Frankie Goes to Hollywood cover testifies. First published in 1980, the magazine closed in 1991. This issue is from 1984, the year I moved to London to study design at the London College of Printing. Blitz, the Face and ID magazines were all very much part of my life then. Looking through this copy, I am amazed at the amount of mono pages – we just take full colour printing for granted now. Jeremy Leslie took over the design soon after this issue, and he now writes one of the best magazine blogs around – magculture.com

Enjoy Vintage at Goodwood! I will post up some spreads later from the magazines featured throughout the week.

Nearly there. Vintage at Goodwood starts tomorrow, and our countdown of magazine covers through the decades continues with Oz from 1972.

This is the fifth anniversary issue, and the list of contributors is amazing: John Peel, Auberon Waugh, Robert Crumb and Peter Till. Sadly, the magazine was on a downward spiral, having been through the courts on an obscenity charge which became the longest in legal history (for the time). Felix Dennis, one of the men behind Oz came out reasonably unscathed, forming Dennis Publishing in the eighties and tapping into the new computer market. Today, Dennis talks of its publications as “brands” rolling them out as franchises in different countries and also online.

Last vintage post tomorrow – and it’s the eighties. Plus, a sneaky look inside some of the magazines.

We continue our countdown to Vintage at Goodwood on Friday, and today is the turn of the sixties.

Homes and furniture was a massive part of the 1960s, with new designers like Charles Eames and Terence Conran shaping the way people lived. Ideal Home magazine was one of the biggest selling titles at the time. Published since the twenties, it is still around today, and recently had a redesign. Some of the furniture in this issue from October 1964 wouldn’t look out of place in today’s copy!

Killing time in Athens airport last week, I picked up a free airport magazine called 2board. I flicked through, expecting puffery for the watches, perfumes and sundry cakes on sale all around me. Instead I marvelled at superb photographs, many of Greece, many not, and at absorbing features including one on The Gypsetters, a social group who had hitherto not crossed my radar. These affluent hippies, inspired by Lord Byron, wander the globe in Pucci kaftans, whatever they may be, and keep their American Express Black Cards in crocodile wallets. Nonsense, but enjoyable nonsense, and lavishly illustrated with portraits of  Gypset icons such as Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo and Brigitte Bardot. All this is seemingly documented in a book entitled Gypset Style, by Julia Chaplin, in case you want to know more. But 2boards real triumph is to look so good while running all its content in two languages – Greek and English. This is a devilishly difficult thing to do. I once had a friend who edited a tri-lingual industry magazine called Pumps, Pompes, Pumpen. He found it far from easy – and he didn’t have to worry about gorgeous layouts.

Four days to go till Vintage at Goodwood, and today we celebrate that event with a magazine cover from the fifties. 1951 to be precise. The year of the Festival of Britain, and the advent of a nation determined to pull itself out of austerity and war.

Picture Post was the ‘Life’ magazine of the UK. It began in 1938 and became an overnight success, selling 1.6million copies at its peak. Through a combination of superb photojournalism and  striking covers, like this one, the publication kept the British people going through the war years and out the other side. It closed in 1957.

Tomorrow – the sixties.

Vintage Goodwood – (a celebration of all that is great about British culture) begins on Friday. Brainchild of Wayne Hemingway (he of Red or Dead fame) – the festival will consist of music, fashion and all things cultural. I dearly want to go, but it is just too far to travel with the current workload we have. Continue reading ‘Vital Vintage (1940s)’