What's Hot What's New

The good, the bad and the ugly. You'll find them all here. Each week you'll get my take on the intriguing, and sometimes peculiar, titles to recently hit the newsstand.

Into the future… Today we are going to look at magazines that have a focus on the future, whether it be the future of magazines, art or what you’re going to have for diner. It is all about the next big thing. I’ll let you decide which is which.

The Last Magazine www.thelast-magazine.com $10.00 To show the fallacy of David Renard’s book called The Last Magazine, I bring you the magazine called The Last Magazine, which will be published continuously. To sum it up in one sentence, The Last magazine is an art magazine that features stunning photography and content with relatively clean design in broadsheet form. For this magazine the format is the one major problem. It really makes the photos pop, but it also gets in the way of the reader actually enjoying the magazine, because it makes the magazine way too bulky. Even if the reader is at home reading the magazine in their easy chair, the magazine comes out as clunky, because of the size of the magazine.  If you can get past the size of the magazine, The Last Magazine does provide some great content for those who love art and want to have a visible sign of the survival of magazines on their coffee table. So, you should definitely pick up a copy the next time you are at the magazine rack.

Future Claw www.futureclaw.com $14.99 From the outside, Future Claw is like one of those magazines that you see on the coffee table at a friend’s house that seems to contain a lot of photos and very few words. In its present state, that would be a pretty accurate description of Future Claw, but it could be much more than that. Future Claw hopes to keep you on the bleeding edge of what is hot and hip in the world of art. The artist interviews add to the experience of getting to see the art and the larger format, although too bulky for most people, does make the photos pop and give the art director plenty of room to work with. The problem is that the creative staff is not using that space to their advantage. The text is very small in some places. If they made the text bigger and made the interviews take up multiple pages, mingling the text with the artwork a little more, it would add to the finished product, and make the magazine better. All of that aside, if you are interested in both seeing and hearing from the artist at the same time, then Future Claw just might be the magazine for you.

Swallow Magazine www.swallowmagazine.com $25.00 With a hard cover, thick stock paper and a price tag of $25, Swallow is the type of magazine that you want to put up on the bookshelf. It is built in the image of other book-a-zines before it. Putting outward appearances aside, the content of the magazine features articles on off-the-beaten path dishes and art showing the relationship between food and our everyday life. All of the content flowed really well. The only things that didn’t quite fit in this issue were the artistic renderings of monsters. For a magazine that focuses on food, it was hard to make the connection. On the whole, Swallow is well worth the read. It will give you a digestive tour of various regions around the world. This first issue focuses on the Scandinavian region. You should pick up a copy the next time you are at the magazine rack and are looking for unique digestive treat.  But do not forget, this magazine is going to cost as much as ordering lunch for one with a glass of wine.