This week we were pleasantly surprised by the arrival of a stylish new travel journal:
The Travel Almanac. It comes with a 'travel log', empty pages in the back for you to fill up as you would with a Moleskine notebook. If
Fantastic Man and
Apartamento had a baby, it would look like this. We talked to the mag's proud conceiver, Paul Kominek.
The magazine in one sentence...
A
bi-annual publication focused on travel and temporary habitation as
experienced by artists, musicians, writers, gallerists, theorists and filmmakers.
The article you're most proud of...
We
were of course very pleased that David Lynch agreed to speak with us and be our
inaugural cover star, but also equally grateful that amazing personalities like
Andy McCluskey of the band OMD, designer Rinko Kawauchi, art dealer Javier Peres, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and atrist Terence Koh took
the time to share some of their personal views on traveling, views they
previously hadn't gotten a chance to share publicly.
What fuelled you while making this issue?
The
albums of Will Oldham provided us with a great soundtrack during the conception
of the magazine, and really helped to keep our moods somewhat calm during the
finals weeks of production. Beyond those records, we fully trusted in the power
of the japanese drink "Calpico" to guide us toward the finish line.
What are the perils of starting a new magazine?
I
think the main motivation to start a magazine should always be a giant interest
and passion for a specific topic and the lack of other
publications that might cover those particular interests. If you can be
passionate about something to such an extent that you´d like to read about it,
it´s likely that there are other people who share your interest.
Conceptually, once you find that gap there isn´t so much to worry about.
The perils involved with making that vision a reality are more of a
technical nature: how to deal with graphic design, distribution, spreading the
word. But all of these aspects are manageable obstacles, as long as
the initial idea can keep you motivated to see the project through to fruition.