Monocle first impressions

Design.
Monocle is big and well designed. There's a measured obsession at work that sieves and captures: things that are obviously prefaces are headed "preface", photos are carefully labelled 01, 02 etc, and pull quotes float between stylised 66 and 99 quote marks. There are maps reminding you of its proudly New York/Mittel-Europe/Tokyo global pedigree; they have more labelled numbers that reference an unnecessarily separate key. This design says: we've gone out into the world, netted and classified it, and here's the need to know, pinned down and labelled on the page. It has the same density - that no-time-to-finish-it fear - that you get with Economist or the LRB - it feels packed, and looks beautiful.

Touch.
It has great, thick, matt paper stock which takes a pencil beautifully and, where the print is light, an ink pen too. Actually, it makes me wish that they would bind in about 20 blank pages of that stock three-quarters of the way through - or wherever the ad yield is lowest - so I could use it as my work notebook for the week or so I'll be reading it. I wouldn't mind if the pages were branded up like posh hotel notepaper, as long as they had loads of space for the actual notes.

Supplement.
The Kita Koga comic is a nice touch. Magazines within a magazine (different design, editorial approach or paper stock) are common these days, but this is interesting: tucked in the back like a supplement or sampler, you read this manga comic from East to West in the Japanese manner. It's about geopolitics and culture and brands and ... well, similar content, different presentation.

Content.
The articles are readable: thankfully it doesn't split the articles up with either adverts or other articles. The content is better than Wallpaper, but sometimes feels a bit Economist-lite. Or: you know when you read the arts reviews in the Economist and they seem a little less, well, Economist, than the rest of it - there's a sense of that. It's tempting to say that it's the Wallpaper-meets-Economist thing, but obviously the Economist itself is also about providing the need to know overview rather than the depth. Huffington Post dubs it "substance with style" in contrast to Wallpaper's style with substance. And maybe this substantial lightness is a good thing. (You can tell I know nothing about content, can't you.)

Perplexed.
I think the difference might be that though they both (forgive my banging on about the Economist, but it's the only magazine I regularly read) have similarly one-eyed lenses upon the world (the one pro-company/pro-individual/less-government, the other unvaryingly informed/ne plus ultran/aspirational), the Economist rubs a finger across the surface of events and trends, while Monocle appears to dip its finger into an area to provide a sample. Monocle's is an approach that's possibly more honest. Though it doesn't work equally across it's five sections: Business is much better than the (geopolitical current) Affairs, and Culture somewhat smears into Design, interiors, fashion and then Edits, which looks to me like more things to buy. Interestingly there are very few prices cited in this magazine - presumably due to the global readership - except for the scary global defence spending charts dotted like RAF roundels through the Affairs section, and the co-branded promotion at the back. It has the effect of making you doubt that these aspirational goods are affordable for you. A purer consumerist experience perhaps, in which the goods transaction is abstracted into a design-yearning. From section to section it can be quite confusing.

Gems.
There's a great interview with the LEGO CEO. As a brand partner Star Wars has gone so much better for them than Harry Potter. I wonder why, but the interview is far too short to tell us, though (a hopefully longer version) is up on the website. (I'm very much looking forward to seeing what the talented Dan P. Hill Esq does with the website and broadcast elements.) There's a great piece on lighting that's also too short. The long report on Japan's navy is quite a scoop. The marketing article has interesting trivia (a ten-pack of Wrigley's in Ohio was the first product to be barcode scanned, p116). And I want some Russell moccasins now. I've only got through two-thirds of it; there's lots of good stuff.

Schizo.
So there's a tension between the aspirational ethos and the reportage. When it's working well Monocle is like the New Yorker, and when it isn't it's the Wallpaper Street Journal. I'm beginning to wonder who it's for. "The brief we wrote was a simple one: a smart, forward looking, single edition global briefing for a highly mobile, international audience" says the editor's coda on p 242. Patrick Bateman would read this magazine, and holding it I sometimes sensed the Bateman that's in us all, quivering.

Apology.
- That sounds rather more critical than I intended. Sorry. To try recapitulate it as a compliment: Monocle is provocatively deep-shallow, serious-aspirational, light-heavyweight. You're going to love it or hate it. Or love-hate it.

Yes.
From the little I've heard about launching magazines from friends in the business, it looks like a unusually finished and polished debut - publishing has less of that perpetual beta thing we see on the internet. Monocle is an impressive book, as Dan puts it.

Will I buy it again? Yes.

Comments

[PhM]

I completely agree with your comments.

Monocle presents in-depth, diverce and "sans langue de bois" content. The format is quite heavy ... read what interest you ... and then, when bored by the metro, read the rest ... and get surprised!

Now, I am just wondering if these guys will managed to achieve one year publishing with less than 30% ad's income. So, let’s see next month issue if subscribing worth it !

[Mehnaz Afridi]

It seems someone has created a video review of the first issue.

[Nicholas]

I picked up the first edition yesterday and have not been able to put it out of my head! It is simply a fabulous magazine. I read the whole magazine in one sitting at a coffee den and forthwith ran to my laptop to find out more about it.

10 points etc. for the publication.

[rodcorp]

I think issue 3 has just come out in the UK. Haven't got to the end of issue 2 though...

[AC]

I agree with your review about the magazine.

For it to be successful however, they really need to work on establishing their readership base. Their subscription plan doesn't offer much of an incentive (for 10 issues plus internet access you pay 75 pounds, considering that each issue is only 5 pounds!)

[klewbert]

As a concept Monocle is great. As a magazine, it doesn't quite work. If I had to peg it, I'd call it a fashion variety magazine, but the topics covered tend to be too deep for the casual rag reader. However, the depth of coverage tends to be too shallow for the serious reader. I think they could fix this by dedicating more time to each featured story, maybe spreading each topic out over several stories and several issues, and thereby making it more of the learning experience that it's pretending to be for its readers and less of a thing its readers feel more pleased to port around than actually read.