Shift!
gutentagverlag
Shift! pushes the limits of publishing.
Berlin, Germany
Choriner Strasse 50, 10435
Email: info@shift.de
- Category: Architecture, Art, Design, Literature, Photography, Poetry
- Periodicity: Published Irregularly
- Language: English
- Format: Variable format
- Price: Variable price
- Web: http://www.shift.de
Founded in 1996
Shift! is a publication that could never be reproduced on the internet. It´s tactile, it´s engaging, it is made out of different materials and sometimes even includes sounds and scents.
Shift! isn´t always a book, because it explores the many possibilities of print and other media and thus pushes the limits of publishing.
Shift! is a study, a discussion, results and events. It´s an event not only for the reader but also for a multitude of creatives, because shift! invites photographers, graphic designers, architects, painters, musicians, writers, poets etc. from around the world to create without compromise.
Shift! is a diverse but coherent piece of work, an experimantal project that involves different people and deals with a different subject matter in each publication.
Shift! is totally independent!
Exclusive Interview
shift!
What is your magazine about?
Shift! is about a totally different subject matter every time, involving different and changing disciplines and presenting itself in different forms.
Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
Initiator and editor is Anja Lutz, graphic designer based in Berlin with a particular interest in print and experimental publishing. The projects however are entirely developed in collaboration with a number of people. Ranging from one person to one hundred and more. It’s the changing team of collaborators and co-art directors that allow shift to totally change and reinvent itself with each publication.
How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
Each publication is to be seen as an independent project involving one to one hundred and more collaborators and contributors. Depending on the nature and scope of the project we spend between six months to two years on each project.
What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
Starting it, making it happen and more than 10 years later still finding the inspiration and energy and joy and above all the collaborators to continue with this project.
Which are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
There is no predefined parameters for neither the content nor the form of the projects/publications of shift!. This means that every project can (has to) start from scratch and redefine all its aspects. This has kept shift! alive and still interesting for its makers, lending shift the potential to fully adapt to any of its current interests and passions and obsessions.
What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Money?
Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
Where ever our fancies and interests take us.
Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
I guess they are like the people making shift! – creatives with an interest in experimentation and independent publishing.
Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
Absolutely super important. It is shift!s strength that it only publishes when it feels that there is something to say and to offer rather than having to stick to a given (time, form, content) frame.
What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
There is no advertising in shift. The only exception was “19,99 – a commercial shift!” that exclusively consisted of ads, real commercial ones, self-promotional ads by artists and totally invented ads. This was shift!s humorous yet critical comment on the increasing influence of advertising and corporate money in the independent cultural field.
What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
Even though I wouldn’t do anything remotely like it today I still like it for its “we do it all different” approach and for our refreshingly naïve but also courageous attitude, as we hadn’t even thought about how to sell it until the finished copies were delivered from the printers.
Magazine favorite(s) that inspired you in your career.
Conceptual magazines. Daring magazines. Experimental publications. Interesting thinking publications: Re-magazine for their fantastic monographic concept. Émigré for their experimentations. Point d'ronie for their carte blanche concept and fantastic contributing artists, Eye and Parachute for their articles. In the beginning of shift! we were definitely influenced by Yps magazine, a 70s youth magazine that was playful and tactile and always contained a gimmick. I have absolutely always been bored to death by glossy style magazines.
Do you keep old copies of magazines? If so, what is your favorite in your collection?
I have a fair collection of Point d'Ironie, the magazine/publication project by Hans-Ulrich Obrist. The publication by Thomas Hirschhorn is my favorite.
How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
No maniac at all.
I am a highly selective and an almost minimalist magazine consumer
but then I wouldn’t even consider shift! to be a magazine. It is unusual publishing projects that fascinate me most, but there are only few and far between.
We are compiling answers from some of the most innovative magazine makers around the world today. Who else should we ask?
Art4d, the thai design magazine. It is a well-designed magazine offering interesting information on asian design, rather than the usual western-centric perspective...
Answered by Anja Lutz (Editor and Art Director)
Magazine: shift!
Email: anja@shift.de
Date: 04-11-2008
Publisher
gutentagverlag
Staff
Art Director: Anja Lutz...contact
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