Colophon 2011

Exklusiv

Valkea Media Sp. zo.o.

Exklusiv is a monthly urban lifestyle title dealing with books, films, fashion, comics, music, design, urban planning, new technology, clubs and extreme media/urban phenomena from around the world.

Warsaw, Poland

Email: daria.oldak@aktivist.pl

• Category: Cinema, Comics, Design, Fashion, Lifestyle, Music, Urban, Street Culture
• Periodicity: Monthly
• Language: English
• Circulation: 65,000
• Price: 230 x 297 mm
• Web: http://www.exklusiv.pl

Aktivist Exklusiv is a monthly urban lifestyle title reaching 40 000 subscribers nationwide with an additional shelf circulation of 25 000. We are published by an independent publisher and advocate counterculture and artistic expression over popular culture and commercial entertainment. We deal with books, films, fashion, komix, music, design, urban planning, new technology, clubs and extreme media/urban phenomena from around the world.

Exclusive Interview

Our readers are online, they listen to the radio, watch tv, and gobble up information from every source possible

What is your magazine about?
Polish urban lifestyle

Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
The magazine grew out of Aktivist - a free monthly nightlife guide. We added more fashion and called it Aktivist Exklusiv. But the demand for more lifestyle content was huge, so we separated the twins and created Exklusiv as a separate entity devoted to an older audience (25-35) with more distinct taste and style and a growing hunger for more then the mass market mass culture has to offer.

How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
We have four people in the editorial team and two people in the graphic team but a much bigger group of contributors. We create the magazine in the office, on the town, at parties, events and everywhere where one of us goes. Then it takes us a week to put it together for print.

What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
We started out as a mailed-only magazine. A big step for us was going into public commercial distribution two years ago. Since then we have been refining our content and strategy to make sure we stay on the edge without going over it. One of the crucial elements we have been toying with are Polish celebrities and our cover strategy.

Which are the key incredients for the success of your magazine?
We\'re opinionated, we have the guts to show and say more, we are interested in stars with content and who bring value as opposed to people and trends that are popular for being... popular.

What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Money! Like most lifestyle magazines we rely on shelf sales and advertising to pay the bills. The latter is a much lesser force on the Polish market then in more developed countries which naturally constricts our production budget. If we had more cash we would make a bigger, even more gorgeous magazine. Grrr.

Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
Fatter. With distribution to all the places where Polish people live. With a reputation as the hot “other” perspective on Polish arts and entertainment. With an active community of readers co-creating our content with us.

Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
They live like their parents couldn\'t live, because back in their day the communists wiped all possibility of choice and individuality from public access. We are addressing the bounce-backs – the people who want to take modern tools to build an exciting life fit to measure, not one size fits all.

Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
Hm. Depends on what you mean by independent. We are one of several titles put out by the same publishing company. However we are not a huge corporate publisher creating a magazine only to maximize profits. In that sense, we want to stay indie foreva!

What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
Ads can be a beautiful, supplementary part of the magazine, but not always. We believe that since magazines deal with products (be they fashion, or cultural products) our goal is also to find a way to work with them to co-create content valuable for us, them (the advertiser) and our reader. That\'s the challenge.

Do you think that magazine readers still need to watch TV? Yes they do. Our readers are online, they listen to the radio, watch tv, and gobble up information from every source possible.


Which is your relationship with your printer? Does he play a main role in your development?
Not really.

Which magazines did influence you most? What are you looking for in other magazines?
WAD, Dazed and confused, V magazine, Nylon, the unforgettable The Face

What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
Wow. When was that?! We have in a way grown in our understanding of what we are trying to do and it\'s obvious from the quality of the photos and articles that the professionalism of the polish media market has come a long way as well.

What question did you never ask in your magazine but would have liked to?
Are we proud to live in Poland? It\'s probably not the most fortunate time to be talking patriotism, with our populist, nationalistic gov. We are able to go and live anywhere else in the world more than ever before but we chose to stay. Why?

How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
Um. 30? does that make me a maniac? If not, then next month I\'ll get 40.

E-mail interview from “27.09.2006”. © Colophon2007.com – Mike Koedinger Editions SA (Luxembourg)

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