Monocle Magazine: Glossy debut with a cool eye on the world
As upmarket monthly 'Monocle' hits the news-stands, editor Andrew Tuck reveals the ingredients that have gone into it - and why 10pm is 'going home early'
Published: 12 February 2007
Three months ago, our offices in Marylebone looked great - all steel and oak furniture from Switzerland - but didn't have any phones or computers. Or staff. Today, they are home to 20 writers, editors and designers. The once-empty pinboard has been transformed into the "wonderwall", covered in proofs for the hundreds of pages we have sent to press for this week's launch of Monocle, a briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design.
I have been here as editor for only two months - after joining from this newspaper's Sunday sister - and I can't quite believe how many stories have been pulled off against the odds in that short space of time. Or how people who never knew each other before have come together as a loyal, focused team.
We think Monocle is just what the market needs - a title that spends serious money on sending writers and photographers to find the best stories on every continent and opposes armchair journalism and shuns celebrity (that includes celebrity writers; we have no star columnists, no picture bylines).
Founded by Tyler Brûlé, the creator of Wallpaper*, it will be sold all over the world; we hit newsstands in New York, London and Tokyo on the same day. And I think it will surprise people with its simplicity of purpose and sharp, glitz-free looks (a new Wallpaper* it is not).
It's almost a year since Tyler first showed a small group of us his proposal for Monocle and asked us to join him once the funding was raised. Over that time, we have all learnt a few rules about starting a new title. Here are 10.
1) You need a good name. The magazine was initially code-named Project Europa, which sounded like a long-forgotten new romantic band. The first potentially real title was The Edit, but that had echoes of The Week. Then, one day, Tyler said: "Let's call it Monocle."
I'm not sure even he knows what made him suddenly think of this name, but it has the right connotations - focus, a singular vision. And when you phone a government minister in South America or call up a chief executive in China, it somehow has just the right level of gravitas. OK, there are a few bad spellers out there who have renamed us "Monacle", just one typo away from "Manacle", which would be a very different sort of magazine. Oh, and an anagram of "Monocle" is "Cool Men" - we like that.
2) Forget the focus groups. We haven't employed a market research company to test "the product"; there have been no surveys, no questionnaires for potential readers. The only people who have read the copy, commented on layouts, deliberated over the cover, have been the Monocle team.
And I think that's why it looks tight - and oddly quirky, too. Even after our first editorial retreat in Zürich last summer, everyone seemed to know what a Monocle story was. We are keen, for example, to celebrate small business, craft, unexpected sources of quality, from the 100-year-old Wisconsin shoe company that's a luxury brand in Asia, to the lighting maverick changing the world of engineering. I did say it was quirky.
3) Spot the opportunity. Recently, the lead item on BBC News 24 was Big Brother. Top Gear was the third item on the agenda. What's going on? Why do so many publications rely on such a limited range of sources - and dress up agency reports as their own stories?
We think there's a gap in the market for a monthly magazine that goes back to the basics of quality journalism, but which is also highly visual and clearly a premium brand. For the first issue alone, we despatched 60 writers, photographers, researchers and stylists to 40 locations. We have no celebs, we don't accept freebies, and I don't think we have a single story that came from a press release.
4) Invest in photography. Some 95 per cent of the imagery in Monocle has been commissioned by our director of photography, Rose Percy. We had a team of photographers with the Japanese fleet for an entire week; we sent Peter Guenzel to four countries in Africa to track the growing power of China in the continent. And we never break up a story with advertising.
5) Hire an international team. Monocle's team is drawn from all quarters of London's expat culture. There's something great about hearing people chatting away to each other in Swedish, German or Japanese, and it has also helped to make the magazine feel outward-looking. And it's useful; whether you are trying to fix a story in Norway or Mexico, your chances of success are so much higher when every conversation is conducted in the interviewee's mother tongue. It also means that you get treats like Yoshi making everyone sushi for lunch.
6) Celebrate print. Monocle is on four paper stocks, the paper trim is our own specification and it's as fat as a book. In the past week we have had visitors from a dozen European newspapers, and when we show them the paper-test dummy with its use of pictures, they can't put it down (one asked for a job there and then). One of those paper stocks is used for a magazine within a magazine, a manga we have commissioned in Japan. Starring our own Monocle hero, Niels Watanabe, it's a political thriller set in 2010. It means we are the only Western magazine with a full-time manga editor in the office.
7) But remember the world's gone mobile. Monocle is not just a magazine; it also launches this week as a broadcast-based website. From day one we will offer interviews, narrated slide shows. For this issue, we sent a two-camera crew to shoot a 20-minute one-on-one with the chief of Lego. We don't simply want to put the magazine online, but commission separate content. It will grow into a daily news service, too.
8) Work the time zones. Monocle has bureaux in New York, Zürich and Tokyo. So writers from Alaska to Patagonia never have to wait for the London office to start its day, but can just call our Americas bureau chief, Ann Marie Gardner (formerly of The New York Times). In Japan, Fiona Wilson runs a team of writers based in China, South Korea, Thailand and beyond. The downside of all this is that you can check your e-mail at any time of day or night and find your inbox stuffed. Oceania and Latin America bureaux are in the works.
9) Keep it simple. The magazine, the web, every broadcast element is all governed by a straightforward A to E navigation system (Affairs, Business, Culture, Design, Edits). The design - by Richard Spencer Powell - is clean and as neatly tailored as a Savile Row suit. Writers get modest bylines on longer stories but elsewhere it's just initials (there's a table of writers if you want to know who we have in Bulgaria or Cairo).
10) You can forget your health regime. For almost a month up to press day, nobody had a day off. Leaving the office at 10pm was called "going home early". Some nights, we switched off our Macs at 3am, or even 6am.
And it was oddly exhilarating. Every night we'd stop work to have dinner together in the Monocle dining room - Lebanese from Maroush, Japanese from Cocoro. And there were far too many crisps and maple-syrup biscuits around the office (don't work for a Canadian).
When we finally got our evenings back, Tom, our chief sub, said he had developed Stockholm syndrome and couldn't imagine what to do with all his spare time. And he'd better not get used to having his evenings back, because we are on issue two now and already I'm beginning to hanker after my late-night Lebanese supper.
'Monocle' is on sale from Thursday, price £5 (
www.monocle.com)
