So! Facing Pages. I’m back. And boy, what a ride. I take three facts home from these four days (two conference days):
1. Facing Pages is great.
It’s just a very well organized conference (only by three people! William van Giessen, Joost van der Steen and Tanja Koning. And lots of nice volunteers). Why? Well, first of all, it’s in a great small city - Arnhem in the Netherlands - which I really enjoyed: You’re always meeting other conference attendees and you have short walks between hotel and symposium, symposium and exhibition space or exhibition space and party.
The exhibition space! It’s so great to be able to see the magazines the speakers are talking about. I enjoyed this in London at the last Modern Magazine conference and in Munich at the last Quo vadis Editorial Design. But the range of magazines at Facing Pages were just HUGE: You couldn’t possibly have a look at every magazine in detail, it was just too much. That was amazing. You rediscovered old magazines and got to know a lot of new ones. The book store above the exhibition was also really good, and I bought five magazines (which is, looking at the magazine prices, a lot).
Also surprisingly well worked the theme of “Activism” at the first day and “Escapism” at the second. And maybe the most important aspect of each conference: I enjoyed almost every talk of every single speaker. it was a really good mix! Simon Esterson had some insights into the “What has been there before us”-part (always nice to have some short history lesson at conferences), The Outpost [Ibrahim Nehme] and Kosovo 2.0 [Besa Luci] surprised with the impact they (and magazines in general can theoretically) have on societies, Delayed Gratification [Loes Witschge] convinced us of Slow Journalism, Das Magazin [Toine Donk] talked about events as side effect of a magazine (and the other way round) and Another Escape [Rachel Maria Taylor & Jody Daunton] explained us creativity. It was nice to hear Patrick Waterhouse (from COLORS) and Peter Bil’ak (from Works That Work) again; but I was especially delighted to hear Francesco Franchi talking, since I’ve read hist book and never heard him talking before. I’m not sure why Franchi is supposed to be settled in the field of Independent Publishing - but neither am I, and it was great that he was there. He explained the structure of the IL Magazine and his Designing News book.
And last, but definitely not least: The people. There are only 200 people attending the conference, so it’s really intimate and you soon know more or less every second face. And it was not only mentioned once that the Independent Publishing people are really nice. I met many interesting people who were willing to share their learnings. Among others I had very interesting conversations with Kilian Idsinga (he writes Magpile reviews and is also super active on Twitter). Thanks to him I will try to read every magazine I bought in the last time from cover to cover. He does it, and he’s super smart about magazines, so it seems like it’s working. Another big surprise was seeing my greatest Tumblr fan, Jacopo Atzori, at the conference. Check out his Tumblr blog - if you (and I) are lucky he will keep writing a little bit more in the next time. And guess what: The IL magazine you see on this blog? It’s mine now! I’ve never had Franchi’s magazine in my hands (only saw it in books or online), so getting this as a present from Jacopo was definitely a highlight.
2. It’s great to be a speaker.
It was my first time being a speaker (you remember? I was asking William van Giessen for feedback for my magazine. And he was like: “We like your project! Wanna speak?”, and I: “Totally!”) …so I was nervous. Not as much as I expected. Still nervous, though. But I think the presentation itself went ok-ish. They have recorded it on video, so I’m looking forward to see if “how I think it was” and “how it actually was” matches somehow.
And I really enjoyed everything around it! It’s so great when everything is taken care of; Joost, Tanja and William did a great job with this. You only book your train, and you’re arriving and there is a hotel waiting for you, and you don’t have to book your conference tickets and you don’t have to buy a lunch etc…it’s just so luxurious. I felt very privileged in the last four days; and very honored to be able to speak.
3. Magazines are great.
Conferences are fantastic for getting new inspiration, and because of the great lectures, the great people around me and the great magazine exhibition, this was working very well. I have some new ideas that I’ve tried out as soon as I’ve got back this afternoon (see my next post).
The biggest effect: All the magazines around me reminded me to be really minimalistic with the next issue. More than ever; and definitely more than with my last draft. I think it was also good for me that most of the people talking were editors (of minimalistic magazines). So it was all about the content; just the content laid out in two or three columns, just a photo next to it - that’s it. That’s how my next magazine has to be. And I can’t get reminded enough that a magazine is about the content. Seriously, remind me as often as possible.
I’ve also thought about a new way to approach designing a magazine (I will talk about this later). And I’m sure that the magazines I bought will influence me a lot (especially if I read them!). The seven-hour train ride back to Weimar took me through the complete issue of Printed Pages (not the last one, thought; I bought an older copy) and half of the issue of Offscreen. Btw, Offscreen! What a magazine. Even better than expected, especially after the latest redesign. I really like it.
tl;dr: Everything was great and Facing Pages equally inspired and motivated me to change some of my current designs for the second issue.