Languages take centre stage in Linguaphile magazine
In March we delivered the launch issue of Linguaphile magazine to Stack subscribers, and then at the end of April, editor and art director Mābu Nauendorff joined me for a Magazine Club conversation about the project so far. Lots of the magazines we send out are made as a labour of love, and Linguaphile definitely fits that description. As Mābu explains, he had never worked as an editor before, and so he pulled together a team of editors, writers, and advisors who could help steer the project.
His day job involves graphic design for translation, so he brought a deep understanding of that to the work. But he also drew upon the expertise of other designers to help him do more. As he explained in our conversation, he’s accustomed to working with Japanese text, and so he understands the rules of designing for Japanese. But that also makes him aware of his limitations in other languages, and he would never attempt to design a page in a language he hadn’t properly studied first.
This sort of fastidious attention to detail runs through the entire project, and informs the central concept of a magazine for people who love languages. Speaking about the normally niche interest of translation, he explained the contradiction at the heart of Linguaphile:
“The discourse about language is either very academic, so complex and impersonal and inaccessible, or it’s very light in this kind of BuzzFeed style, where people just reproduce narratives about language… but don’t check whether any of it is correct, or sensitive, or appropriate. So we wanted to do the middle way, where it’s accessible, but it’s still based on reality.”
I think that explains the care and attention that makes Linguaphile so special, and if you received it from us in March I hope you enjoyed it. You can see my full conversation with Mābu in the video below, and of course if you didn’t receive Linguaphile from us, you should join our independent magazine club so we can start delivering great publications to your door every month.
