Wow, this was a long weekend. I went to an Editorial Design Conference in Munich called “qved - Quo vadis Editorial Design?”. I took the train to Munich last Friday in the morning and took the car back at noon yesterday. Actually, the conference “only” lasted three days, but I had the spontanious honour to visit Mirko Borsche in his bureau on Monday.
The conference itself was …nice and brought some good inspiration for my current and especially for my next magazine. But I had to notice again that German is just not the perfect language for small talk. In three days, I spoke to less people than on one day at the Modern Magazine Design Conference in London last October.
But I did speak to great people like Mike Meiré, Jeremy Leslie and of course Mirko Borsche. I also bought two COLORS magazines (the News and Market issue), a magazine full with images (I always forget the name…but I will mention it in a few days or weeks) and almost, almost the PORT. I like the PORT design…I just didn’t like the last issue so much; so I will wait.
It’s actually the first time that I spend money on expensive magazines (the full-of-images-mag costs 17 Euro). The most expensive magazine issues I bought so far were the ones by Monocle. I don’t have a problem spending 50 Euro on big Gestalten books, but…more than 8 Euro for a magazine is a critical price. The difference: When I’m purchasing a book, I know I get the whole thing. The full package. There is nothing at it that I don’t buy when I buy a book, because the book is everything there is. A magazine is different: When I buy one issue, I only get a part of the story. It’s like buying only one table leg instead of the whole table. Or only an episode of a TV series instesad of a movie.
That’s how the buying process feels for me - but of course, one issue of a magazine can feel like a complete work, too. And especially with COLORS I think that’s very true. Also, a second reason for buying the magazines: There can’t be found in our university library - but all the important books are there (I also brought our library to buy the “Modern Magazine” book by Jeremy Leslie, YEAH).