Trend: Agency Magazines

Reader Slaven Marinovic, from Hamburg, Germany, submits to us his thoughts on the plethora of Agency-created magazines. He says, "Now that we all have become part-time fashion designers and/or musicians running our own independant label thing, it`s finally time to publish our own mags, of course with no corporate backing - strictly DIY."

While agency self-masterbation is not necessarily a new trend (this blog notwithstanding, of course), the act of investing efforts (and presumably costs) into self-published glossy style mags is. But is this good or bad?

I remember way back when Wallpaper magazine first dropped and won much envy and many a lucrative client for it's agency publisher Winkcreative. This was a new model, at the time, for building agency awareness and imaging itself as relevant and on the pulse of what's fresh...and presumably imparting great "qualifications" to handle your account.

I suppose another by-product of such efforts is releasing the tensions of pent-up creatives and writers who just sometimes want to get something done and out in front of people without client filters and caps.

Slaven further remarks, "Agency mags have obviously learned the Ogilvy lesson - publications attract clients - and are exposing their good (or poor) ideas/thinking/writing/taste by either taking the experimental 'let's have fun'-road or by issuing the hundredth lukewarm post-Wallpaper avantgarde lifestyle glossy.

But judge yourself, here are some links:

http://www.hekmag.com
http://www.verysuccessfulbrandmanager.com
http://www.ladestation.net
http://www.taped-mag.de
http://www.destructed.info
http://www.sfaustina.com
http://www.cobaltrevolter.com
http://www.twohundredby200.co.uk
http://www.castlemagazine.de
http://www.cuemix-magazine.com
http://www.candyculture.net