Monocle Magazine

I hope Monocle Magazine - the new publication from Tyler Brule who launched Wallpaper - succeeds. But I'm afraid the first edition is a disappointment. The magazine aims to combine reportage, business news, culture and design for an upmarket or aspirational readership. He raised £5m to launch and intends to produce ten copies a year selling at £5 a time - with a target circulation of 150,000 split across the USA, Europe and Asia. There seems to be plenty of luxury-end advertising.

The idea of another quality magazine with an emphasis on design and the visual as well as long form journalism is attractive. However, having bought the first copy today, it feels a long way short of what it could be.

Firstly, the conventional A4B4 size does not allow design and photography to be as strong as I'd hoped. Matt paper does not do justice to some good photography. (And we could do with some serious photo-journalism at the moment.) It's thick - there's plenty to read. But the lead feature on the Japanese navy does not seem either important, different or interesting enough to launch a new concept in serious coverage of global affairs. The whole magazine has an Asian feel to it - as many fashionable innovations do at the moment - which may just be a feature of the launch edition or something more intrinsic.

A Q&A with the CEO of Lego is fine as the centrepiece of its business coverage - but it's too soon to tell whether it can offer business features of any weight. Altogether it feels rather like an extended in-flight magazine - gliding at 30,000 feet above the real world. The website offers a second by second countdown to the next edition. Actually, I can wait, really.

I'll give Monocle another try, but fear it may be headed for the same fate (and for the same reasons) as that 1980's news magazine start-up with an emphasis on photo-journalism - James Goldsmith's Now!

Comments

[anon]

The magazine is B4 not A4

[Richard S]

Thanks - corrected..

[Dan Hill]

Full 20-miinute version of that Lego CEO interview is on the Monocle website ...

[Richard S]

Thanks Dan. Most people I've read seem to like Monocle, so don't take too much notice of me...hope it goes well. R

[Nick Turpin]

I picked up a copy of Monocle at the airport this week, read it on the flight and am still reading it back home in France, I liked it, it introduced me to a lot of offbeat international stories that I don't get from things like the BBC web site. There are a lot of Magazines out there but I have never felt any of them were aimed at me....but I am hopeful with Monocle and, like you, look forward to the next edition.

[Mehnaz Afridi]

Looks like someone has done a video review of the first issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGp37sh58GQ

[Chris Vivion]

Here's some good photojournalism, right now:
http://www.blueeyesmagazine.com

[ian]

i;m an australian reader and i'm impressed every little snippet about australia has been correct and the places they wrote about were down to a T. so i was really impressed. i used to work at a huge newsagent and read magazines all day. this is the first one i actually bought on a regular bases. yo'll be hard pressed to find any magazine that comes close to this