POP Magazine Issue 22

I've never been interested in POP magazine until last summer, when the first issue of POP with Dasha Zhukova as editor-in-chief came out. In this issue, Dasha Zhukova talks in the editor's letter about how everything is made digitally available today and whether it will be the end of today's print publications or not. At one point, she says: „However, art and fashion magazines serve a more aestehtic purpose than an informative one. It is the beauty of the layouts, the quality of the design, the feel of the paper, all the tactile sensations that make these publications worth buying. These magazines are collector's items of sorts, visual time capsules of the period in which they are published.“ While I think this doesn't apply to all fashion magazines, it certainly does now to POP. I am not buying magazines anymore to keep me updated or to get the latest news, because that's what I have my Google Reader or Twitter for nowadays. I have already written a bit about all this in one of my previous blog entries. This issue of POP Magazine contains over 360 pages and is full of beautiful editorials, well written articles and interviews with a great layout and design.

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This issue is also a good example on how you can connect digital content with a printed publication. They included some graphic markers for something called augmented reality, where you will have to go to their website and show the marker to your webcam – something very interesting will happen. Unfortunately, I couldn't test this so far, because thepop.com/ar and POP's iPhone app are both having problems at the moment.