Slanted
Slanted
Cover
6 cover(s) available
view all
Subscriptions
www.slanted.de
Advertising
Lars Harmsen Slantedhttp://www.colophon2007.com/admin/magazine.php?mag_id=750
Typography
Karlsruhe, Germany
Südendstr. 52, 76135
Email: harmsen@finestmagma.com
- Category: Typography
- Periodicity: Quarterly
- Language: German / English
- Format: 205 x 255 mm
- Circulation: 10,000
- Price: 12 €
- Web: http://www.slanted.de
Founded in 2005
Slanted started with a Weblog in 2004. The first magazine issue was published 2005
SLANTED is the first German magazine devoted to typography. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, and has been designed to complement the highly- frequented internet blog at www.slanted.de.
The main focus of SLANTED is typography found within design, illustration and photography, but a variety of other topics -- related both directly and indirectly to the field -- are also addressed. The magazine contains expertise analyses and reports, as well as information on typographic experimentation, portraits and interviews with today’s superstars and underground players on the international scene of typography and design. All of this is presented alongside spectacular, first-class graphics and thought-provoking photography.
Being also online, the SLANTED magazine is considerably different from other publications of its kind. In the print version, your will find featured exciting articles on discussions within typography, as well as book synopses, reviews of magazines and introductions to font labels that are on the Web. It also contains a comprehensive index of all published articles.
While the Internet blog includes postings and contains daily up-to-date commentary, inviting you to participate with all your thoughts and views, the magazine covers typographic topics in a more extensive and concentrated fashion -- utilizing, of course, all the advantages, possibilities and features available to print media.
The very make of the magazine alone is a sign of its quality and uniqueness. The cover will always be created out of new, exclusive and high-grade materials with astonishing surfaces. The unique look of the magazine is due to it being printed with special colors and a glossy finish. The content is printed in black on high-grade picture print white -- this is typography in its original vitality. Ads and photo series will be presented and highlighted in 4C printing. The blog’s appendix is printed on colored offset paper with its very own look and feel, and is easy to use. SLANTED is tangible typography!
SLANTED wants to convey the feel of typography. SLANTED magazine is all about communicating the emotion, creativity, excitement and change occurring within typography today. It covers a wide range of topics, which will fascinate and encourage even non-typographers to want to know more about fonts -- to see them with new eyes, learn more about them and reflect on their significance.
SLANTED hopes to reach everyone who is interested in typography, design, graphics and communication. The authors, designers, students and professionals from other fields who will be involved in putting together each magazine will change with every edition. A forum for creative people from all across the world will develop, inviting you to read and participate in a very extraordinary way.
Exclusive Interview
Slanted
What is your magazine about?
Design and typography first. Illustration and photography second.
Who’s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations!
MAGMA Brand Design is the company behind the Slanted Magazine. Everything started 2004 with a weblog about typography. Since the founding of the design company MAGMA in 1996, we designed more than one hundred typefaces, distributed by our own foundry www.volcano-type.de. The Slanted Blog was the perfect medium to talk with other designers about typography and design. In a very short time the number of readers increased enormously. The magazine was kind of an answer to the daily speed of blogging, slowing things down and giving type it´s perfect medium: paper.
How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
Slanted Magazine has a monothematic orientation. On the blog a call for entries invites the readers (students and professionals) to send us something, texts or graphic work regarding the current topic. In addition, we do research for appropriate and interesting fonts in the programme of a big number of type-foundries. One section of the magazine is dedicated to illustration, inviting illustrators and designers to create a piece of work starting from the name of a font (Font Names Illustrated) or illustrating a song (Typolyrics), using a specific font and the lyrics.
We spend about two months putting together the content and designing the magazine. Two people work two months on each issue, but there are also a lot of contributors and some interns working on it.
What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
Slanted Magazine has been produced first in digital print. Océ printing systems was partner of the first five issues. Slanted was published twice a year, but now we do 4 issues a year, quarterly. The 6th issue is the first one printed in offset with 10.000 copies.
Which are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
Because of it´s monothematic approach, the magazine has a long durability – each issue is kind of a catalogue, issue #5 (The Antiqua Boom) for example about serif-typefaces. It´s treatment of design related topics is very emotional and personal, it gives a lot of space to the visual material or the contributors. The presentation of the typefaces e.g. are designed by the type-foundries and designers, not by Slanted.
Slanted presents a lot of student work, more than most of the other design magazines. The extensive interview section features both underground and prominent actors of the international typography and design scene. Also, we started as a kind of fanzine, completely independent, just trying and doing things – this spirit definitely has it's importance for the magazine's success.
What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be “the” thing to help the magazine to improve?
Time, money, distribution. More time to fix each issue would be nice, but is to expensive. More ads would be great. A better distribution would help and reduce production costs.
Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
A dream would be to develop the design in a city matching the monothematic subject. Imagine the Antiqua Boom Issue being designed in Venice, the Western Issue in Phoenix, an Oriental Issue in Kairo ... inviting local typedesigners and creatives to work with, getting inspiration by local flavours and colours. We hope that Slanted Magazine will be as present in the mind of designers like U&lc, emigre one day... i-D.
Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
Most of our readers are german speaking designers and type-designers. We have a lot of students among our readers.
Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
Yes, very much at the moment. Independence allows us to develop, to reconsider and re-design things as we want to. Of course we make a lot of mistakes, Slanted is far from being perfect – it´s part of the process. learn by doing. It makes you proud in the end.
What’s your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
We don't have much experience with ads, there were almost none in the past issues, most of them non-commercial. We have somebody professional taking care of that now.
What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
Good start. Some of it is messy, in terms of design. A "red line" was drawn and has gotten more and more specified/differentiated in each following issue.
Magazine favorite(s) that inspired you in your career.
Twen. Tempo. Rolling Stone. RayGun. U&lc. Eye. Emigre. ZEITmagazin. i-D. purple. Brand Eins. Fanzines and Underground Publications.
Do you keep old copies of magazines? If so, what is your favorite in your collection?
Keeping most of them and throwing away some of them every time we move with the office. All first issues.
How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself a maniac?
Monthly 2–10. We get a lot of magazines to review them on the blog. Maniac? I do not feel like that. Others might think so.
We are compiling answers from some of the most innovative magazine makers around the world today. Who else should we ask?
Mirko Borsche, Mario Lombardo.
Answered by Lars Harmsen (publisher)
Magazine: Slanted
Email: harmsen@slanted.de
Date: 29-10-2008
Staff
Director: Lars Harmsen...
- 2044
- 5180
- 2482
- 662
