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Theme

Theme

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Theme Publishing

Asian Culture Quarterly

New York, USA

20 Jay Street, Suite 305, 11201

Category: Society
Periodicity: Quarterly
Language: English
Format: 230 x 280 mm
Price: $ 5.95
Web: http://www.thememagazine.com

Founded in 2005

Exclusive Interview

Theme

What is your magazine about?
Theme is an award winning magazine covering global contemporary arts and lifestyle through the lens of Asian culture. Theme is timely. It was born out of a need to present contemporary Asian culture in a global context, not as something exotic or “other,” but as an increasingly present force in contemporary culture. You see its influences in fashion, in film, in language, in design. We publish Theme not just for Asians, but also anyone who is interested in contemporary culture. And contemporary culture is eclectic and global just like our readers.

Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
Jiae Kim was born in Seoul and moved to the West Coast of the U.S. when she was 8. She escaped the boredom of middle-class suburban life by graduating early from high school and hitch-hiking her way through Guatemala and Mexico. She attended New York University and studied history and art history. Once again bored with life in America, she moved to Seoul and then Tokyo, before returning to New York University to study art and technology. Prior to starting Theme, she was an associate partner at Pentagram Design. Her projects at Pentagram for Bloomberg, Walker Art Center, Detroit Institute of Arts have won design awards from AIGA, I.D. magazine, How magazine, and the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers. She teaches design at the School of Visual Arts and is on the board of directors of the New York chapter of the AIGA. John H Lee spent his youth growing up in such diverse locations as Borneo, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, and Auckland. While attending college he spent two years as a professional BMX rider, developing his own brand of skate/bmx clothing, and organizing events and concerts promoting the culture. From ’91 to ’96 he art-directed advertising and initiated guerilla marketing campaigns throughout Asia for clients like Levi's, BBH, McCann Erickson, and Nike. In 1997 he moved to the U.S. where he has art directed and designed volumes of projects for everyone from the Gap to Diane von Furstenberg. He has also spent time as creative director for iconic brands such as Equinox Fitness and Pokemon. We met in 1996 in Seoul and then moved to Tokyo together in 1997 where we got married. Jiae dragged John kicking and screaming back to the U.S. where they lived in San Francisco for a year, hated how small it felt, and then decided to give New York City a chance. They’ve lived in New York since. Theme is a lifestyle magazine that focuses on stories about contemporary Asian culture. We collect stories for each issue based on a theme, which allows us to provide a coherent lens onto a topic. Our target audience is creative people who enjoy stories that are well-written, well-designed, and have a global perspective.

How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
Our core team consists of Jiae, John, our editor Rain Noe, and our associate editor Linyee Yuan. We also have a team of interns that rotate throughout the year. We usually work several issues in advance, but each issue takes approximately 2 months to produce before we send to our printers, and it takes up to 2 months after that to get on newsstands.

What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
We began Theme because we saw some really exciting things happening while living in Seoul and Tokyo. The art and fashion scene were booming in Tokyo, and Korean art was just starting to find its own voice. We didn’t like the way American media covered these stories, and we wanted to tell the stories the way it should be told—from an insider’s point of view. In addition, we launched emeht, a creative consulting agency, in late 2007 in response to requests from our advertisers to help them with other projects. They liked what they saw in Theme and asked us to translate that level of work to projects ranging from writing/designing books, art directing fashion campaigns, and producing theme-based events.

Which are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
Collaboration is the backbone of magazine publishing. There’s no way you can produce a solid issue without fantastic editors, writers, photographers, illustrators, interns, proofreaders, printers, scanners, retouchers. In the three years we’ve been publishing Theme, the consistent level of production and integrity in the design has attracted some awesome talent, which in turn keeps the level of work high. John and I have art direction/creative direction backgrounds, so we’re quite used to setting the overall direction of the magazine and letting the talent we work with do what they do best. The success of the magazine is really tied to the people we select to work with us.

What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Isn’t it always money? Theme is an advertising-based magazine, and it was challenging at the start to attract good, consistent advertisers. But by producing stellar issues that influential people talk about and want to be a part of, we’ve managed to attract brands like Scion, Puma, Stussy, Dewars, Absolut, Nike, Zune to name a few. The business side of any creative business is just as important to nurture as the creative side. And most often than not, it requires just as much creativity.

Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
Hopefully we'll continue our path of controlled growth. We've come a long way in the last 5 years, and I hope we'll go an equally long way in the next 5.

Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
Theme’s readership consists predominantly of opinion leading women and men between the ages of 21 and 40. They live and work in urban areas and are either professionals or people in the creative fields of design, art, advertising, music and fashion. The majority of them are single and tend to have high levels of disposable income. Theme’s readers are art and tech savvy, and are usually the first amongst their peers to seek out new phenomena and cultural connections.

Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
It is to an extent, but if we were to be bought out tomorrow, it wouldn't phase us in our approach. Our vision will remain unchanged. We love what we do. We're ambitious. And if we had a financial backer to get us to where we're going at a faster rate, why not?!

What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
It would be foolish to say advertising is severed from content in this day and age. The state of the global economy affects how we produce magazines, and advertising being our main source of income, we kind of have to go with the flow and do whatever it takes to continue publishing.

What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
It was a good start. We jump into a project, sometimes a little blind, in order to get it off the ground. We’ve found that knowing too much, planning too much, can be crippling. Once you get a project going and you’re committed, you can tackle the challenges one at a time. This is how we started Theme, and this is how we tackle each issue. Nothing worth pursuing is really risk-free, so we try to embrace the risk. It makes us nimble. We're very proud of issue 01. Some have showed up on ebay so I guess that's saying something.

Magazine favorite(s) that inspired you in your career.
NY Times magazine continues to be a great read. Believer/McSweeney's are awesome.

Do you keep old copies of magazines? If so, what is your favorite in your collection?
A magazine is like a cultural time capsule - I love looking through old magazines from the '80s - and '90s. Bikini magazine, Res, and many more that don't exist any longer. R.I.P.

How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
We subscribe to a bunch of magazines we like, but we try and not go overboard. I'd say 5-6 titles each month. We're conservatively maniacal.

We are compiling answers from some of the most innovative magazine makers around the world today. Who else should we ask?
Meatpaper, Papersky, The Skateboarding, Esopus, Believer and Butt.

Answered by John Lee (Co-Publisher) Magazine: Theme Magazine Email: john@thememagazine.com Date: 16-01-2009