If you're the kind of cool metrosexual who insists on going to Reykjavik for the weekend to buy new shoelaces, you probably already read the design bible Wallpaper*. Now,the Canadian wunderkind Tyler Brûlé is shortly to launch a brand new monthly news magazine called Monocle.
According to profiles in the Observer and the Monday Media Guardian, he's keen to avoid being tied down by any requirement to regurgitate the news as the Economist and others do. Also a no-no for him is what he alleges is competitors' over-reliance on PR copy. Instead, he offers in-depth journalism and coffee table book-quality photojournalism, as in their first cover story on Japan's growing naval power: "It's a great piece of geo-political analysis and it's also an outtanding piece of reportage."
The Wallpaper* style comes through again in the photos - "I don't care if it's a man or a woman reader, sometimes people want to see a picture of a warship or a handsome looking helicopter" - and the design and volume of a coffee table book, crammed with luxury goods advertising, all for a steep five pounds an issue.
I'm keen to see someone try to take on and beat the Americans - Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and The New Yorker - at the magazine game. If nothing else, I myself would be delighted to have a magazine that will last me longer than a restaurant dinner, the curse, I regret to say, of being a very fast reader.
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