Magazines

I love magazines. As child I used to read every magazine my parents bought and I also bought my owns. Now, there are 2 magazines I never miss, despite the fact I don’t keep archives.

A reason why I like magazines is that a magazine is the mirror of many people’s work. This work might include research, opinions, artwork etc. The feeling you got when you flip through the glossy pages is great. The weight of the paper, its essence, the colors, the layout of a page are foreign lands waiting to be discovered.

Magazines are also a part of my work even though I am not a graphic designer. The leading and the space between columns, the typography, the illustration and the logos are ideas which can be used in Web design as well. The way an article is written can be also a guide for the Web writing. Of course paper and screen are two different areas. However there are certain similarities.

Greek Magazines

While good magazines can pull different trigers in your mind, Greek magazines do not fall in this category. Their layout is boring, sometimes real sad. Articles are conservative and you don’t gain a lot of things after reading them. Once, I read a Greek translation of an article which happened to have read it before in English. Despite the fact that English is not my mother language I found reading the Greek version extremely difficult. In the end I don’t want to pay for something so unimaginative. Not to talk about the cheating of design layouts. So I abandoned Greek magazines and I am fine with it.

The only issue is that I can’t find the magazines I want on time. Most of the times foreign magazines arrive at Greece weeks after publication. So I keep looking in kiosks for my favorite magazines and people around me think I am trying to steal them. Subscription could be a solution.

After buying my Mac I tried to get into the world of magazines around Macs. I bought Macworld, it is good, but I expected more. So I stick to Practical Web Design which I discovered lately and to WIRED which is my favorite one since years. If someone knows any other good magazines, for geeks or not, please go ahead and let me know what’s your favorite one.