Locked and Loaded

A magazine is a place where things are collected and stored for use. It used to apply mostly to weapons. The magazine of a ship was where the ammunition was stored. The clip of a semiautomatic is its magazine. But the most common understanding today is a book of articles/items printed in on a regular basis. Some of the best printed magazines deliver ammunition with which to make choices or act (Utne Reader, New Scientist,The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue…)while others are just fetishistic collections of cultural rubble curated for the edification of a tiny niche.

I've always liked magazines - in my childhood the local newsagent ordered my copy of Shoot - no, not a magazine dedicated to the NRA lifestyle, an English soccer magazine. I would pore over statistics and images of my favourite teams. In the day they still ran features on Pele and George "99% of my money I spent on women and booze, the rest I squandered" Best. Look and Learn was a semiregular favourite - I loved the pictures by Frank Hampson (who drew Dan Dare). Discovering GQ in the early eighties led to my first cologne purchase - thanks to an ad for Paco Robanne - the one David Ogilvy immortalised in his Ogilvy on advertising book and a drive to live in loft apartments (which lapsed when children appeared).

A couple of years back I launched Idealog with the chaps at HB Media and saw magazine publishing from the inside. Hard work. My enthusiasm for magazines in a undiminished - though I see their role changing dramatically in the near future - it consumes a lot of resources to make a magazine - one must wonder about the carbon footprint of buying a hefty edition of Italian Vogue in New Zealand - and how many are shredded unsold?

But, ethical considerations aside - if you enjoy magazine culture you'll probably also enjoy the blog Magazineer - thoughtful, insightful and well written.

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Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si

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