Ian On The Red Dot

I admit. I didn’t like the magazine when I saw the first issue. I didn’t give it a chance. Didn’t explore its contents beyond flipping the pages. When I needed to remove clutter, it was one of the first magazine to go. But recently, I can’t seem to avoid this magazine. One of the founders of Lexean shared about the magazine at Singapore’s first Pecha Kucha Night. Ridz has shared an article from the current issue here. I stumbled onto their site and enjoyed their articles.

From throwing away the first issue (sigh.i had a piece of history in my hands and I didn’t realize it.dumb), I want to get a subscription of this magazine (my gf is so not going to support this).

Why?

Firstly, I understand what the founder was sharing when he talked about the direction the magazine was taking. It is simple and normal for a magazine to put on its cover a photoshopped picture. Normal. And if you think about it, one thing that magazines like to do is put celebrities on it. But a celebrity can appear on many covers and only once in a while, do you get a cover that really speaks so eloquently about the economic, social, political, cultural issues of a point in our shared human history.

Looking at the past covers of Lexean, you will find that every cover is unique and a piece of art. No other magazine can have the same illustration on its cover. I’m not sure if the founders intended it this way, but the decision they made with regards to the art direction for the cover of their magazine has made their magazine something worth collecting.

The founder also shared about creating a magazine which you would want to put on your desk. I think they really understand the power of the desire to create an identity. We humans do it all the time - from the laptop we choose to buy, to the clothes we wear, to the car we choose to drive, to…

Online, you can see that desire in how we decorate our blogs with widgets and badges. Bookjetty allows people to post on their blogs the books they are currently reading - in a way, it allows us to project, if not fake, our intelligence and consummate taste.

We don’t just exist in the online world. As we move to do our reading online, and as people herald the death of print media, maybe what Lexean is doing might be a lesson in how to survive if not thrive with print media.