A collaboration between MagCulture's Jeremy Leslie and journalist Katie Treggiden, Fiera is a new model of design magazine crowd-funded by readers – but how will it stand out in such a crowded market?
Who is your target readership?
Katie Treggiden: Fiera is primarily targeted at people who would love to be able to go to the world's design fairs, but can't get to them or can't get to them for long enough – designers, buyers, journalists and students. But it's about the people and processes behind the designs, so it will appeal to anyone who's interested in what makes creative people tick.
How will the content be different from the fair reports that other magazines produce?
KT: The front half of the magazine will make readers feel as if they were there by featuring quotes, interviews, behind the scenes photography – the sort of things you only see by going to the design fairs yourself. The back half will pull together the key themes from four shows and offer some critical analysis. It will aim to make sense of some of the macro trends in design and what's driving them for that half-year.
It’s a biannual title but a fast-paced industry, especially when it comes to trends and new talent. How will you compete with the online design news cycle?
KT: We won’t. Design shows are already well covered on blogs and social media. In my role as editor of Confessions of a Design Geek and editor at large for Design Milk, I contribute to that coverage and will continue to do so. That kind of coverage is fast-paced, immediate and dynamic but it's also as chaotic as the fairs themselves. Fiera has a different role. It's about providing one source of comprehensive coverage, and about taking a step back and making sense of it all.
The Kickstarter campaign has just launched. Why did you decide to fund the magazine this way?
KT: Crowd-funding is a really exciting, if slightly nerve-wracking, model. We really like the idea of a magazine entirely funded by its readers. It means we know there is a market for the magazine before we create it, and it means we can concentrate on making the best possible magazine for them, because they are our investors.
Talk us through the decision not to have advertising, and how this will affect funding future issues.
KT: Everybody who knows anything about independent publishing has told me it's not possible to run a magazine on cover price alone, but I really believe that people will be willing to pay a little bit more for absolutely independent content, that is focused on discovering and championing new designers. I guess we'll find out.
Jeremy, how did you and Katie meet and when did you realise that it would make a fruitful partnership?
Jeremy Leslie: We met at one of Steve Watson's Guardian Masterclasses on magazine publishing. I was warning the attendees about the perils of making your own magazine but Katie wasn't listening to any of that. I liked the idea that she was coming from blogging to print and felt that two people known for their online commentary on design would make for an interesting collaboration.
Can you talk us through the design concept?
JL: At a macro level we want the magazine to very much be an object, a special thing to be kept as a unique record of designers as they begin their careers. The detailed page designs have yet to be fully resolved, but the first iterations prepared for the Kickstarter campaign feel like they're pointing in the right direction. The images provide the colour and visual flavour, the design is simple in basic terms – monochrome, two fonts, spare – but works to a pretty complex underlying grid to provide variation on the page.
What will be the next stages once you hit target?
KT: We'll be doing more work finalising the design of the magazine and looking for contributors – both up-and-coming illustrators, and writers from outside of the field of design. Then I'll be off the London Design Festival in September and Lodz Design Week in Poland, designblok in Prague and Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven in October looking for new talent. And I'll bring home a whole heap of exciting words and images for Jeremy to turn into Issue 1, which will launch in November.
Support Fiera's Kickstarter campaign here.