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D Day is coming closer, or should we say C Day? COLOPHON 2007 – International Magazine Symposium will be launched in just 76 days. Till then, register for this event and ensure that your magazine is featured in the world's largest international magazine directory, currently displaying over 1,200 magazine titles!

What to expect? Around 30 hours of conferences, panel discussions and portfolio shows, a temporary magazine store, an opening cocktail and an electro pop party, moreover this 3-day-event will also display 10 EXHIBITIONS from MAGAZINES ALL OVER THE WORLD. Here's a little taste of what awaits you!

Carl*s Cars
Norway

Some call Carl*s Cars a niche magazine but then again, Oslo based founders, Karl Eirik Haut and Stephanie Dumont, consider “the established media narrow in its content." Carl*s Cars is about people, car culture, art, fashion, music and a fine taste for the retro-chic. New photo shoots sit alongside 1970s Mitsubishi car ads featuring geishas. The fictional Carl chooses the content of each issue, and his magazine's glossy look and sublime design are enhanced by its sharp sense of humour and critical eye on our consumerist society. As its creators themselves put it, “the thick cover of Carl*s Cars should feel like a firm handshake when you pick it up to read, because Carl is a nice guy”.

Coupe
Canada

Anyone interested in what a magazine can look like when it has been removed from the commercial mainstream needs to acquaint themselves with Coupe. This Vancouver-based magazine uses a large-size format to present material not normally associated with magazines. Each issue takes a theme, often a fairly loose one, and plays around with words and images to create a stimulating, highly visual, but largely unstructured mood board. Yet it is clearly still a magazine. The running order is skilfully managed to take best advantage of the flow of pages, using changes in pace to maintain interest. Coupe is an experiment made all the more enjoyable by the infectious glee of its creators.

Frame
The Netherlands

There are many magazines about interior design out there but only one Frame. Published out of Amsterdam but with a global outlook, in eleven short years it has established itself as the magazine of record for the new world of commercial interior design (‘The great indoors'). Unashamedly trend-orientated it focuses on the new and the radical in offices, shops, bars and clubs. While many interiors magazines strive to let the featured work be the star, Frame presents its content within a constantly developing design that makes each issue a visual treat.

Rojo
Spain

Rojo is a compendium of new artwork, mostly photographic or illustrated, sent in by contributors from all over the world. The Barcelona-based founders of this book-like publication call it an “emotionally structured, text-less magazine.” There is “no theme and no censorship” and each issue is compiled just one week before the printing deadline. A highly successful print magazine distributed in approximately 30 countries thanks to an Internet based creative community that is both reader and contributor. Besides the quarterly magazine, the little Rojo team has also produced, or has being involved in 200 design orientated events worldwide and such activity and visibility contribute to its growing and growing readership. In 2006, Rojo started its own monographic book collection with artwork by the magazine's contributing friends such as Boris Hoppek or Neasden Control Center . .

Shift!
Germany

Magazines are collaborative by their very nature, but Shift! takes collaboration further than most. Each issue presents a range of invited contributions from artists, photographers and designers, all based around a theme. The works are presented unedited and in a format that reflects the theme. Issues have appeared as a calendar (‘Ahead of Time'), a video (‘Slideshow') and a computer game (‘Get Rich with Art'). Other issues have included ‘Doubletake', an end-of-analogue photographic project where film was deliberately double-exposed by different artists, and ‘19.99' a Commercial Shift! ' which featured only paid-for ads of all sizes from artists, designers and businesses. Shift! regularly tests the very definition of ‘magazine' but has much to offer the mainstream in its intelligent playfulness.

Street Fruits Tune
Japan

Fashion is no longer about brands, but about a more personal style that includes second-hand and hand-made clothing. Fashion is also about personal expression, as in the striking outfits of Japan 's Gothic Lolitas, ‘kawaii' and neo-punks. Recording all this is Aoki Shoichi, perhaps the most famous and certainly one of the most enduring witnesses of changing street trends. Shoichi publishes three monthly magazines of people's home-styled looks. The first of his documentary magazines, Street, was launched in 1985 and focused on London . Two other publications have joined his stable: Tune is dedicated to Tokyo boys' fashion, while Fruits shows the outfits of Tokyo 's girls. With little text, the photos speak for themselves. The outfits change, but Shoichi's eye is constant and uncritical, and the result is a visual treat.

Yummy
France

Our increased interest in food as a lifestyle has led to the launch of many new food magazines in recent years, but none is as intriguing as Yummy . Published from France (where else?), Yummy sidesteps the regular subjects such as celebrity chef profiles, recipes and dietary advice, to concentrate instead on food culture in its broadest and most visual sense. Here is food as fashion, studies of packaging design, and photographic essays on ‘junk food culture'. It presents an alternative view of the world of food, arguably a more realistic one, where food is to be enjoyed for what it is rather than analysed and idolised.

Omagiu
Romania

Bucharest-based Omagiu is an impressive example of Central/Eastern Europe's arrival in the world of independent style publications. Each issue is monothematic (Fake, Tourism, Fashion, Problems...) and produced to extremely high standards. While its art direction fits easily within international fashion conventions, its content is determinedly local and clearly not driven by the demands of advertising or PR. Omagiu 's mix of stylish design and interesting content (printed in both Romanian and English) makes for a uniquely fascinating piece of East European creativity and is an always engaging read.

S Magazine
Denmark

As an erotic fashion photography title, S Magazine immediately stands out. Its eroticism has nothing to do with the rise of ‘porno chic', but instead is a showcase for superlative photography and lively design. The magazine describes itself, in its seven-point manifesto, as a publication “for the more discerning voyeur” – and it includes erotic fashion imagery aimed at both men and women. It rarely publishes articles, but instead focuses on large-format photography, immaculately reproduced. Created by Design City Copenhagen, S Magazine manages to achieve the near impossible: an amazing, high-class erotic product.

thisisamagazine.com
Italy

One of the first web projects to mimic the physical experience of turning the pages of a magazine, thisisamagazine.com launched in 2002 and continues to play with concepts of how the magazine experience might be transferred to the web. Originally Flash-based, recent issues have used PowerPoint and QuickTime to present increasingly complex content provided by artists and designers from around the world. Intriguingly, the project has since turned back on itself and publishes printed ‘compendia' that seek to reflect the online experience in print. Using one-off formats, die-cuts, multi-sized pages and tip-ins, these publications contain content originally created for the web, now repurposed to make objects that are more like art books than magazines.

WE LOVE MAGAZINES BOOK

WE LOVE MAGAZINES is a book specially created for the symposium. With groundbreaking visuals and contributions from all around the world, it will include in-depth features about all aspects of magazine creation, a worldwide magazine directory featuring 1,100 independent magazines from more than 50 countries, plus a list of international magazine stockists. It will display around 400 pages and be designed by London-based creative director Jeremy Leslie and edited by Madrid based writer and journalist Andrew Losowsky.

Do you love magazines? Then be one of the first to get your hands on THE prerequisite reference for periodicals and pre-order your book now: (www.colophon2007.com/book)

NOT YET REGISTERED?

What are you waiting for? Register now! Get your Flash Pass and pay online.

Journalists, publishers, bloggers: the December PRESS RELEASE.
We thank you for informing your readers!

LAST REMINDER – CLOSING OF DIRECTORY UPDATES FOR THE BOOK:

MAGAZINES: update your fact sheets in our online directory and send hi-res pictures (300 dpi) of your magazine covers to COLOPHON . This information will be part of the directory in the book “WE LOVE MAGAZINES”. Does anything need to be updated? Then hurry up, we are already past the deadline! Contact info@colophon2007.com

QUICK REMINDERS – CALL FOR ENTRIES:

CREATIVES: photographers, illustrators, editorial graphic designers – both professionals and students. Read here about our PORTFOLIO SHOWS.

MAGAZINES: distribute or sell your magazine during the symposium. Read here about the ephemeral book store called “Room with a View”. During COLOPHON you'll see it, and then you won't...

WHO WE ARE

Colophon 2007 is produced by Mike Koedinger Editions SA (Luxembourg) in collaboration with Casino Luxembourg - forum d’art contemporain.