I bought a couple of magazines a couple of weeks ago. Probably the first time in about four or five years that I’ve swapped cash for that kind of printed paper.
They arrived last week. In the post. By Airmail. Because they came from America. They could not have existed at any other time than this.
They are, in fact, the third and fourth issues of a magazine called Coilhouse (“A love letter to alternative culture”). Lots of weird and beautiful stuff. And very much solid, physical objects. Shiny, embossed, hefty pieces of dead wood. Full of interesting words and images sculpted by interesting people. They are sexy, sexy things. Have a taste, for flip’s sake.
That’s the blog, by the way, because… you know… of course there’s a blog, and because Coilhouse the paper-and-ink object sits on top of a much larger, much more abstract object made of ones, zeros, social engagement, word of mouth and an appreciation for things made of passion and love, rather than the expectation of a fat cheque.
The magazine, each issue, has a print run of 1000 several thousand copies (see update below). Which, given the quality of the product, is pretty amazing. Or it might have been the last time I bought a magazine. But the web and the little factories we all carry around now to access it have made the real world cheap to mould into whatever you want.
A photoshoot of Mexican “Day of the Dead”-inspired corsetry, sitting next to an interview with Comics Visionary, and Greatest Living Scotsman, Mr Grant Morrison? There it is, sitting next to me as I type this into my own little factory.
Making real-world things, like small copy-run magazines, or limited-edition whatevers, or custom-made whatnots and getting them to the people who’d appreciate them enough to make the making worth your while used to be rare. It needed a lot of luck, the right place, the right time, etc. And the only option the rest of us had left was the one-size-fits-all mediocre version of culture (to be horribly general). Where what you pay for and what you get is just the thing, the object itself, rather than the story behind it: the process and the meta and the reason why. But, to quote Hugh MacLeod, the web makes kicking ass easier, and increasingly I think that means offline ass as much as online. When you can get the mix right, playing with the best aspects of both those domains, then you really do have a piece of the future on your hands.
Update: I had a very nice comment from Nadya Lev, one of the editor/publishers of Coilhouse, offering a minor correction to the above (duly made). Unfortunately, the server this blog is on had a bit of a flakey over the weekend and all the pending comments seem to have been lost. But! I managed to save Nadya’s comment from the WordPress app on my iPhone (which seemed a bit slow on the whole losing comments thing. Hurrah!). A quick bit of copy/paste/email and here is said comment in full:
Jamie, thank you for your kind review of Issue 04. This kind of feedback means a lot to us, believe me. Minor correction to your post: 1000 copies is actually just how many copies we sell on the web, not our entire print run. We have several thousand more copies that also make their way into stores, though the copies we sell to readers off our website are really our bread-and-butter, so thank you for supporting us… both by buying this magazine, and by writing this review. All my best to you!
A perfect example of the “meta” enabled by, but not restricted to, the Web. Thanks, Nadya.
