We love Colophon - International Magazine Symposium Luxembourg

H Bomb

Issue 02

Spring 2005

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H bomb is Harvard University's first and premiere magazine about sex and sexuality.

Harvard, USA

Email: web@h-bomb.org

Category: Culture, Poetry, Youth
Periodicity: Quarterly
Language: English
Format: 213 x 277 mm
Price: $ 5

Founded in 2007

Targeting the young, open-minded, and urbane, H bomb promotes intelligent discussion about sexuality, relationships, and love not found in other media. It features fiction, essays, advice, poetry, art and photography by students. H BOMB brings together hot minds and brilliant bodies in a magazine that is both smart and sexy.

Exclusive Interview

We still can’t figure out what percent of the Harvard student population are virgins.

What is your magazine about?
H BOMB is a multimedia, omnisexual lit and arts magazine about sex. Created by and for Harvard students, H BOMB features articles, fiction, poetry, interviews and art on themes of sex and sexuality, focusing on the experience of sex at Harvard. The magazine is both fun and funny, serious and sexy, and represents students of all sexes, sexualities, tastes and perspectives. The title “H BOMB” is Harvard slang; “dropping the H Bomb” refers the act of telling someone you go to Harvard.

Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
H BOMB was founded in 2004 by two Harvard students, Camilla Hrdy (’05) and Katharina Cieplak-von Baldegg (’06) for the purpose of bringing a fun, sexy discussion of sex to the somewhat serious, puritanical Harvard campus. When we are asked “Why start H BOMB?” we simply respond “Why not?” College students think and talk about sex all the time and making a magazine was the perfect way to bring this discussion to the wider student body. Harvard already has a magazine for every possible topic… but not sex. H BOMB became an international media sensation after it was granted the status of an official Harvard student magazine by the Committee on College Life, a board of administrators who approved the magazine in a unanimous vote.

How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
Currently H BOMB is an annual magazine, created by a staff of about 10 editors, designers, and business people. H BOMB plans to go online this spring and increase its output to at least one issue per semester.

What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
After becoming an official Harvard student organization, H BOMB received a generous grant of $2,000 to publish its first issue from the student government. The media coverage of the magazine made it easy to sell advertising, allowing H BOMB to publish 8,000 copies of its first issue in full color. 3,000 copies of every issue are distributed to Harvard students for free, while the rest are sold in stores in Cambridge and around the US, and over the website www.h-bomb.org. The first issue is sold out and the second issue is on sale now.

Which are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
Before H BOMB, no one had ever seen the words “Harvard” and “sex” in the same sentence. These two fascinating themes come together in H BOMB, earning the magazine attention from around the world. The success of the magazine, however, rests with the quality of art and writing by the students who contribute to the magazine, making it far and away the most sophisticated, witty, and sexy college magazine about sex.

What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
It can be difficult to interest busy, ambitious Harvard students in sex. While the campus can’t wait for every new issue of H BOMB to come out, H BOMB draws from a surprisingly small (though talented) pool of artists and writers. Ideally, Harvard’s hardworking students could be more interested in sex and writing and talking about sex, so it is our mission to seduce them away from their studying to have more fun.

Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
H BOMB plans to expand its website to include online editions of the magazine, merchandise, blogs, polls, discussion boards, etc. This will allow the magazine to reach a wider audience including students from other schools and around the world. H BOMB also hopes to recruit work from guest-authors and guest-artists at other schools, in order to reflect a more diverse student body while maintaining its relevance to university students everywhere.

Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
Most of our readers are college students, though we have many subscribers in cities around the world. I don’t think many professors read H BOMB, however.

Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
That H BOMB is a student magazine is its greatest asset. H BOMB presents a more sophisticated and realistic look at sex in college than commercial magazines and pop culture, which tend to focus on distorted, rather pornographic depictions of sex.

What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
Our advertising funds our magazine, but does not influence our content in any way. The ads themselves are just one enjoyable part of the magazine, since many of them are quite sexy.

Do you think that magazine readers still need to watch TV?
TV is also a relevant medium. I don’t think you can compare them.

Which is your relationship with your printer? Does he play a main role in your development?
Our printer is wonderful because it is professional, fast, and inexpensive. Other than that, it has not played a large role in the development of our magazine.

Which magazines did influence you most? What are you looking for in other magazines?
The Boston Phoenix has described H BOMB as “Nerve’s younger, nerdier sibling,” and I do think we’ve been inspired by nerve.com and other hip, young culture magazines. Sometimes I joke that H BOMB is like the New Yorker, but about sex.

What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
It’s cute! We were so thrilled and happy to be making a magazine. That spirit shows through throughout whole the issue.

What question did you never ask in your magazine but would have liked to?
We still can’t figure out what percent of the Harvard student population are virgins. We asked the Health Services and they wouldn’t tell us. We expect it must be unusually high.

How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
I’m a magazine junkie, so I could never commit myself to a just a few subscriptions. When I lived in Paris I would go to the Centre Pompidou just to go to the gift shop and read the magazines. They have so many awesome magazines. I could read magazines forever. If you know of any hip, European magazines that want to give me a job, let me know! I’ll be out of school and unemployed in six months.
E-mail interview from “23.04.2006”. © Colophon2007.com – Mike Koedinger Editions SA (Luxembourg)