A magazine in a day

I was browsing through the excellent Springwise recently when I came across 24Hour Magazine, a magazine made by a group of Belgian artists and writers in just 24 hours.

I think it’s fair to say the results are mixed. There are some nice stories that fit well with the magazine’s concept, for example the piece on the limits of time expressed in art. But then there’s an interview with a girl who customises trainers, which reads a lot like (and quite probably is) somebody interviewing their friend to fill a few pages.

But the main problem with 24Hour Magazine is acknowledged in the editor’s letter at the back of the magazine: One of the great things about magazines is that it takes months to put them together. Months of having ideas, whittling them down, and eventually coming up with a lovely polished finished object. Whereas the team on 24Hour Magazine had just a day, and the result is that it all looks and reads a bit rushed.

One of the most interesting elements of the magazine is the content produced around it. There’s a blog with videos, there was a Twitter feed and there’s a Flickr feed too. And maybe that’s really the point. I viewed the magazine on Issuu, meaning that it’s just another bit of digital space rather than a polished, physical object, so in a way the magazine itself is just another bit of the overall product.

The closest I’ve come to being involved in a magazine like this was the magazine made over three days at Colophon. I think they’re going to be printing hard copies of that sometime soon, and of course I’ll include it here when they do. But in the meantime are there any other magazines imposing these extreme limits on themselves? Kith Kin made a kind of single sheet newsletter called Working Title for the Milan Furniture Fair in April this year, and apparently they’re going to be doing the same thing for the London Design Festival in the autumn. Any more for any more?