I'm a culture-o-file, and chances are if you're reading our site (and specifically, this article), you probably are, too. To me, there's nothing more fascinating than comparing different societies' interpretations of the same idea. One way I satiate this thirst for cross-cultural information is by reading different design and fashion magazines from various countries.
Below, I've pulled together a few of my favorite 'zines from across the globe that always encourage me to think about art (after all, high-quality, collectable magazines are art) in a new, refreshing way:
Location:Barcelona, Spain
Focus: Fashion and pop-culture interviews.
Highlights: Clean design intensely focused on the strongest suit of the magazine: stunning, editorial fashion photography. That said, some effectiveness in writing is lost in Spanish-to-English translation; flowery writing seems to shoot for the moon… and miss. Get your hands on the Spanish text first. It'll do the writing a bit more justice.
Published: Five issues per year
Location: Milan, Italy
Focus: Interiors and interior design. "A bored materialist can’t understand that a house has to become a home. It happens, not through perfection but by participation," say founders Andy and Elsa Beach of their no-fuss mission.
Highlights: Apartamento isn't an interiors magazine that deals with the perfect staging of an expensive room; rather, it focuses on how interesting people occupy the spaces they live in. The small format and paper stock used make reading this magazine a uniquely tactile experience.
Published: Biannually
Location: Paris, France
Focus: Fashion, fashion and more fashion. Each issue is guest edited, so depending on who's behind the wheel, you may or may not see more editorial text. Usually, you'll find slim to none.
Highlights: See fashion in a new way. The content is photographed just as sexily as if the products featured were draped on a model — but they're not. Shoes, bags and clothing finally get the close-ups they've always deserved.
Published: Biannually
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Focus: Design Bureau takes a good, hard look at engaging (and quirky) design around the world, inspiring a conversation between design-makers and design-lovers. It's not stuffy; it's downright cool.
Highlights: It's published more often than the market competitors, and the blog is updated with a constant daily stream of entertaining bits and bytes.
Published: Bimonthly
Location: Athens, Greece
Focus: Urban youth culture, modern fashion, art and music.
Highlights: Ozon fancies itself more "urban" than other fashion magazines, but really, it's more mainstream in how the "front of the book" is established and clearly laid out.
Throughout, its features are easily decipherable owing to section headers like "Backstage," "Book reviews," "Trends," etc. The larger features are also printed in English. The blog is translated by Google from Greek, so again, go easy on its fluidity.
Published: Biannually
Have other striking publications to offer magazine connoisseurs? Leave them in the comments below.
