Colophon 2011

Grab

Grab

Cover # 06

3 cover(s) available
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Subscriptions

Andrea Racobaldo andrea@pnzap.it

Advertising

Elisabetta Mariani adv@grabmagazine.it

Pnzap snc

Contemporary Subjects

Rome, Italy

Via Monte fumaiolo, 38, 00139

Email: info@grabmagazine.it

• Category: Art, Illustration, Photography
• Periodicity: Every three months
• Language: Italian / English
• Format: 245 x 220 mm
• Circulation: 15,000
• Price: Free
• Web: http://www.grabmagazine.it

Founded in 2006

Born at the beginning of the 2006 it's trying to improve everyday as an independent magazine.
Tri-monthly free magazine about street/pop/conteporary art-coulture and subjects.
In 2008 Grab growned from 48 to 60 pages and the 4th Issue will be released in May 2008.

Exclusive Interview

Our printer helps us to save money and to keep our decisions rational.

What is your magazine about?
GRAB Magazine is a bi-monthly free magazine about contemporary subjects: pop and street art, fashion, influential artists and movements, graphic and motion design, illustration, photography, music, shops, art galleries, sneakers, magazines and books, innovative brands and products, the sticker phenomenon, music and film festivals. It supports and collaborates with internationally renowned artists and established acts as well as underground movements and avante-garde, producing a high print quality publication which makes use of design, creative and unconventional advertisements, photography, illustrations and artistic layout to produce a strong visual communication enabling us to attract and fulfil the needs of a target of readers who cares for the new forefront of artistic expressions, lifestyle, communications media and entertainment.

Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
3 founders from Italy, Rome. 3 guys in love with the street/contemporary/pop culture. We decided to start this project because we love magazines and we thought there was not a magazine like this in Italy. Today I’m the only founder who still in the project. But I’m not alone as there are some new guys working with me on it.

How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
Basically one guy cares about the materials, interviews and editorial and chooses them. (this guy is me). I have a main assistant who helps me a lot in writing articles and finding ideas. Behind that there’s a design addicted guy who cares about the InDesign work. We are 3 but on each number there are something like 7-9 contributors who help a lot!

What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
To be able to print a second issue whereas our first issue basically got only 1 sponsor. Our magazine is a free magazine so it basically created debits.

What are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
A lot of people like it. I think that it’s fresh. There are tons of colours and funny stuff inside. It’s free but it looks like a non-free magazine. People love it cause we talk about interesting and contemporary stuff.

What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Finding people which support the project in a financial way. It’s really hard to catch advertisers and the main problem for us is to find the money to print it. Just a bunch of sponsors enabling us to continue printing it without have to sell our private records and books collection on ebay to keep the project alive.

Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
Getting more and more pages. Improving in the paper quality and layout design. Be known by the people who care about these kind of projects.

Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
Something like… style opinion leaders, creative people, fashion addicted, decision makers, magazine and toys collectors, time wasters, skaters and snowboarders, sneaker collectors, spry artists, concept stores owners, event organizers and students. Does that sound common?

Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
Yes. We always look for organizations to support our project but we want to keep deciding everything that is in it without having to be approved by some kind of boss or company decision maker.

What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
We actually don’t have so much sponsors even if we’d like to. We never did an adert-driven-editorial by now.

Do you think that magazine readers still need to watch TV?
No.

What is your relationship with your printer? Does he play a main role in your development?
Our printer helps us to save money and to keep our decisions rational.

Which magazines influence you most? What are you looking for in other magazines?
LoDown Magazine, StreetWear Today, Refill Magazine. Interesting and new stuff. With a nice layout and a great care in the paper/size decision.

What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
It’s not so far away. We think there’s more then one weak element/ decision, but nobody has invented 52h/day yet. Anyway, we are proud of it.

What question did you never ask in your magazine but would have liked to?
Can’t think at anything right now. Sorry.

How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself as a maniac?
Let’s say: buy – 5, get – 8, read – 25. What kind of maniac are you talking about? Joke. Anyway, No, I think I’m not a magazine maniac even if I love them. I don’t get mad if I miss some issues of my favorite stuff even if I’d like to have them.

E-mail interview from “27.11.2007”. © Colophon2007.com – Mike Koedinger Editions SA (Luxembourg)

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