| Tyler Brûlé once shook my world by creating one of the best international glossy magazines of the nineties, “Wallpaper”. In February of this year he launched a new magazine, Monocle. Brûlé describes Monocle as a mix between Vanity Fair and the Economist. Actually it is a slick, extremely well designed glossy magazine about (geo)politics, business, culture, art and design. Together with the magazine a website, as attractive as the magazine, was launched (www.monocle.com) Brûlé (1968, Canada) rose to semi-stardom in the nineties after having created “Wallpaper*”, a lifestyle bible for the semi-intellectual. He decided to start the magazine while in hospital, recovering | from a sniper bullet he received covering the Afghanistan war as a journalist (1994). He lost hereby the use of his left hand. Once the magazine sold 150.000 copies per issue worldwide he was able to sell the magazine to TimeWarner in 1997. He went on setting up a design agency (Winkmedia later to be transformed in Winkreative), hosting and producing TV shows, and writing columns for a.o. the Weekend supplement of the Financial Times, the Neue Zurcher Zeiting am Sonntag and lately The International Herald Tribune. To be able to start Monocle in February of 2007, he raised 5 million Pounds from private investors. For some people Brule is God, for others he is an arrogant, style obsessed, shrewd gay marketeer. I have never met him, don’t know him, can’t judge him, but in my book, Monocle is just one of the best new magazines in the world. |
Posts
