The First Issue | Why Print?

Nov 25

“WHY PRINT?” has been the most asked question by people around us. Simple for us to answer: “THE URGE. We are too obsessed with the touch, the habit of preceiving words and images from paper, not a screen.” Furthermore, among magazine makers, we get to know how their minds were made up at the first beginning.

ENCENS

I was driven by past magazines, mainly from the eighties, who would show to their reader pages and pages of an unheard-of designer and create a whole new aesthetic around it. I also had a nostalgia for designers that shaped who I was, most of them still alive while being pillaged by a new generation who totally ignored their name. I wanted the magazine to be a soundbox of these two extremes, which meant stepping back from the current, the trends, the zeitgeist… all the salt and pepper that gives to a periodical printing object its raison d’être.

But, at the beginning, achieving that mission was still purely theoretical. It took us several issues (with a major shift at issue 5, and the arrival of Sybille Walter as art director), to start seeing it happening in the images, the layout, and the way the whole content got its own pace. Back to the first issue, I was not even involved in the styling. I would spend hours describing my ideas for hair, for makeup, for buttoning or unbuttoning a shirt, to stylists who would look at me as if I was from another planet, or some sort of parody of Diana Vreeland! Of course, all of them (they were 3) would politely answer yes to everything, before turning up a week later with something that could have been published in 3 different titles without seeing any difference. I took over the style with issue 2. And in fact, when I put a story together, I always ask myself - ‘Could this be somewhere else?’ I believe that a good fashion story for us should be totally unpublishable anywhere else. Sometimes, our photographers complain of being boxed in what they call ‘the Encens style’. That’s the downside of it. But you can’t have it all.

- Samuel Drira, publisher & fashion editor

SLANTED

It all started in Karlsruhe. A tiny, unspectacular town in the south of Germany. Nobody gave a shit about typography there. I felt hungry. Very hungry.

In 1996 I launched Volcano Type. The foundry was a vitrine of fonts I have created with my fellows at Magma, a company I founded during my studies. Volcano grew, sells went ok, but nothing serious though. In 2004 we launched Slanted blog and started talking about typography. We reached out for friends in other cities to discuss about design, fonts, labels, designers... Overnight, Slanted was on the map. The blog took off like Musk.

At the same time, I had a friend who worked for OCE that develops, manufactures, and sells printing machines. We made a bet. I didn’t believe in the quality of digital print. He of course did. He offered me to print a magazine that would look perfect.

The print looked much better than I expected. We took the few hundred copies to Typo Berlin 2005. They were given away for free. Within a couple of hours, I knew: Wow! This is it! Digital print can be cool. Having a design magazine is even cooler.

A magazine is a wonderful door opener—you get in touch with all kinds of interesting people. Now, with Julia (who started as a trainee and now runs Slanted Publishers as a partner with me since 2014), we are very much enjoying travelling, taking us—and the readers—to other places. We met people we never though would be possible to meet. A kind of self-made privilege. We are constantly fueling our curiosity of what is out there through and with Slanted.

- Lars Harmsen, founder & editor-in-chief print

**SLANTED Magazine**, Null-Nummer, cover, 2005

FUKT

I started FUKT Magazine as a student at the art academy in Trondheim, Norway 1999 together with Nina Hemmingsson. What we loved with the magazine format was the intimacy - for us this felt more democratic and less elite than museums and galleries.

This was a time before social media and just in the start of the digital tools that revolutionized the print industry. It was a challenge to do research, and to receive digital files: we used a combination of floppy discs and cds which we got sent per mail. We did the design ourselves without any clues, learning by doing. Still, we wanted to do a real printed magazine, not just a Xerox copied zine.

The magazine has changed radically since this first issue, we were extremely unexperienced. The first issue definitely has a slightly naive but still fun quality to it! Other magazine makers probably have a plan how the next issues will be, we just started and took it from there. Since then, our trademark is not to have one design, we always change both formats and logo. This makes it much more fun to work with, we keep surprising ourselves.

I remember doing the index in handwriting, but the lousy scanner we had somehow jumped two lines without us noticing. In the end we had to write the missing lines in all the copies for hand. We also ended up doing some hand coloring on a few pages. To save some money we had chosen to print part of the magazine in black and white. I think we had a print run of 800 copies, so it was doable, and added a nice touch to the issue.

- Björn Hegardt, founder & editor

INDEX

I founded The New Order magazine back in 2009 but left the magazine only a few years later. I really missed making magazines personally but also felt that the way magazines were made had changed a lot since then and was frustrated by a lot of what I was seeing and reading.

I still loved design, art, and style, but I now too had a growing interest in the social issues the world is facing. I wanted to make a magazine that showed those two things could live together. Based in New Zealand the original concept was centered around a frustration with the local magazine offering, but this has changed considerably since then, we realized that being based here gave us a unique opportunity to make a magazine that was genuinely global in its approach.

While we were driven by the knowledge that magazines needed to be very different to the way they had been, one of the biggest challenges was figuring out exactly what that meant and how we would go about doing it. In many ways this challenge still exists, I feel that this is an organic process, involving a lot of experimentation and risks, we’re constantly looking for new ways to make the process work as we grow. The first issue was released during a full lockdown period here in New Zealand and it was exciting just to feel like we had made it happen given all those restrictions.

- Adam Bryce, publisher & editor-in-chief

**INDEX Issue Nº 1**, *‘CHANGE’* — Sept/Oct/Nov, cover, 2020

MIDDLE PLANE

For a long time, I wanted to bring fashion and art together in a different way, which made me think about how distinctive a magazine could look when taking an artist’s practice and personality and translating it into fashion editorials. So, it was more about not going with the conventional way of fashion magazines and taking a magazine to a more profound meditative way of thinking.

We keep changing with each issue, especially in these unprecedented and challenging times; we keep asking questions and exploring the print format. Issue 0 was our pilot, where we mainly dealt with the process of creating a magazine. Since then, we have been dealing with only one artist per issue to be more intimate, more personal, and at one with the chosen artist. So, with each issue, you are getting a different story translated into entirely different content, which makes the whole thing far more exciting.

- Roni Monhait, founder & editor-in-chief

**MIDDLE PLANE Issue no.0,** cover, design by VLF, 2018

RECORD

What were the challenging and delightful moments in working on the First Issue?

The first issue was really a process of working out what the magazine would look like, and some of the content was informed by going through the process, like the song lyrics on the inner front and back covers. It was a design decision that has become a really important part of the magazine’s identity. The challenges were in remaining independent and getting trust from artists initially. The delightful moments were that I love doing the interviews and getting to know the artists and building a community around Record.

Who were the key members of the first issue? Who was first come up with the idea of the magazine?

I had been thinking about starting a magazine for years beforehand, but it took quite a bit of time to come together. The input came from living in different cities around the world like Paris, Melbourne, and New York, and discovering unique but also interconnected music scenes there. My first interviews were with Philippe Zdar (R.I.P) at his studio Motorbass, and Joakim in Paris. The generosity and openness of those first interviews gave me a lot of energy to keep going with it. Record is a team effort and bringing it all together comes in large part from our Art Director Holly Canham, and Senior Editor Michael Kalenderian.

As the first issue is always a bold experiment, what are the things you wish you would have known better?

I would say that ignorance is possibly bliss, and naivety can be a good thing. If you knew too much about most industries, you’d probably never get started.

What’s your pity in creating the first issue? Any abandoned ideas that you really loved at that time?

No regrets really. Looking back now, the magazine has evolved quite a bit since then, but we wouldn’t be here without that first issue. It was quite an indulgent process really, where we constructed the magazine to only have things, we love in it. So, I look back with complete fondness.

- Karl Henkell, editor-in-chief

**RECORD Issue 1**, cover featuring *Lovefingers*, photography by David Lekach

WHITELIES

Stefan Dotter started Whitelies back in 2012. Two years after we met in Berlin, we founded Whitelies Media in order to publish the very first print publication. Stefan, as editor-in-chief, was (and still is) in charge of the contents and art direction at Whitelies while I took care of the business challenges and creative direction.

Whitelies has been a rise against superficiality in fashion, photography and art from the very beginning. It was (and still is) our aim to raise awareness for a new kind of aesthetic in these disciplines.

Working with a timeless, non-seasonal approach, the magazine is still purchased years after the initial release. Every issue is mono-thematic with specific topics being worked on from different angles and fields.

- Oliver Schleith, publisher & creative director

**WHITELIES Issue 1**, cover, photography by Theresa Marx, 2015

2020*

Both challenging and delightful for us is always about the format. Yes, the real fun is always thinking about different formats and see if it can be carried out. It is really difficult to get to the thing you have in mind if it’s something unusual and sometimes you need to make a few trials before archiving the final result.

For the issue 00 was so great to get where we wanted, an iPad cover system with magnets, invisible ink with UV light… it was sort of an experiment and then lockdown caught us in the middle of production.

Even if we are very happy with the first issue developed idea of course we still have a lot of other ones that are still on the waiting list. Doesn’t really feel like abandoned as we are still planning to develop some of them somehow, someday. That’s the fun of doing something different each year!

- Adela Rodríguez, editor-in-chief

TERRIBLE PEOPLE

The magazine started as a student project in 2017, while we studied at the London College of Communication. Often, we observed how terrible people were behaving around us, which inspired us to make the most out of it and to give these terrible people a spotlight! As part of the student project, we were asked to only produce a minimum of five magazines, but we boldly increased that number to 275... why not? We had the facilities, people and loads of good ideas, which we wanted to share with the world;) So far, we had been the first student group aiming that high with our production goal, using more budget than allowed for the student projects. Maybe that terrible behaviour helped to create our first issue... haha

The identity of the magazine came from our own identities in London - foreigners trying to survive in London. As outsiders, we could all observe the city from a different angle. Being newbies to the city, episodes such as people refusing to throw their trash into bins, commuters pushing hard to squeeze in-n-out the trains despite their heads being clamped by the train’s door, had blown our minds. We were stunned by the bearability of Londoners and if you’ve ever wondered why people do terrible things... so have we!

Later, the idea grew from culture shock to exploring the ‘darker side’ of human nature and this still continues to be the core of the magazine. Until now in 2021, we have published four issues and are currently planning our fifth issue. We still mainly use a sarcastic tone to spice up our content. However, under the surface, we hope that the stories we publish, will help our readers to understand other cultures better. We believe somehow that most “terrible behaviours” are based on cultural differences :)

- Yuting Huang, co-founder & editor

**TERRIBLE PEOPLE Issue 1**, cover, 2017

This story was published in noisé 01 The Solstice, 2021.

TANG SIYU