Luksus Freestyle Magazine
Denmark's largest magazine about outdoor, adventure and street culture.
Copenhagen N, Denmark
Esromgade 15, opg 1, st, 2200
Email: monrad@luksusmag.dk
- Category: Adventure, Urban, Street Culture
- Periodicity: 8 x / year
- Language: Danish
- Format: 223 x 285 mm
- Circulation: 16,000
- Price: Free
- Web: http://www.luksusmag.dk
Founded in 2002
Exclusive Interview
It’s always interesting to be influenced buy something where the content is in a completely different ball park.
What is your magazine about?
The magazine is about everything outdoors – including mountaineering, climbing, surfing, snowboarding and skiing.
Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
After working in various outdoor shops in Copenhagen while climbing and going on mountaineering expeditions we were frustrated that there was no magazine that wanted to publish our stories from around the world. Rather than sitting around and bitching about it, we decided to start that magazine on our own.
How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
We are one editor and one art director. We do a lot of the interviews and reports from e.g. climbing and surf contest in Denmark. Besides that we have a big network of people who perform these sports and go on the big trips. They write the stuff and send in their pictures and we put it together.
What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
Discovering that we could hire a company to deal with the advertising – something we really never liked doing ourselves. That rally helped us a lot and gave us more time to focus on developing the content and look of the magazine.
Which are the key incredients for the success of your magazine?
Stories that inspire the reader, interesting interviews, great photography and effective layout.
What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Since we are a small team, we have to do a lot of stuff ourselves, that we’d rather not spend time on: writing bills, sending out to our subscribers, doing taxes etc. A larger organization could probable take care of that.
Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
Just as fresh as it is today.
Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
The readers are people who take part in the sports – or cultures – we deal with. People who go skiing for half a year, spend all their money on a mountaineering expedition to Everest, quit their job to go surfing in South Africa etc.
Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
Not really, but we haven’t found the right publisher to merge with. As long as we can have our editorial freedom, we wouldn’t mind merging.
What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
No advertesing-driven-editorials. We are strictly independent in that matter. If a test in our magazine says a certain hard-shell jacket is good, it really is good.
Do you think that magazine readers still need to watch TV?
I know I do.
Which is your relationship with your printer? Does he play a main role in your development?
He comes up with certain ideas and we discuss paper quality, weight etc with him from time to time.
Which magazines did influence you most? What are you looking for in other magazines?
When we started out we all really liked The Face. Sadly that magazine no longer exist. Now we’re more into GQ, ID, Dazed and Confused, Outside Magazine and some other fashion magazines. It’s always interesting to be influenced buy something where the content is in a completely different ball park.
What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
It’s certainly very different from where we are now. Soooo much white space and we hadn’t even heard about Photoshop’s unsharp mask. We’re probably a bit more conform now and seem to fit more content into the magazine.
What question did you never ask in your magazine but would have liked to?
Not sure.
How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
I subscribe to about four magazines and tend to buy at least four more.
E-mail interview from “8.9.2006”. © Colophon2007.com – Mike Koedinger Editions SA (Luxembourg)
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