Reading cities with Desired Landscapes magazine
Natassa Pappa is the editor and creative director of Desired Landscapes, a magazine that looks deeply into cities to discover the stories and quirks that make those places unique. As she says, it’s very easy these days to travel around the world and have basically the same experience wherever you go – you can fly to the other side of the world and stay in an Airbnb apartment furnished with the same Ikea basics as you have in your own home, eat in the same restaurants as the ones on your local high street, and use your phone to get around the place as if you lived there. That’s a shame, she says, and Desired Landscapes is her attempt to show the many ways in which travel can be more interesting and rewarding.
Small and compact, it’s based on the classic pocket guide book and the plain typographic cover doesn’t give any indication of the strange and whimsical stories the magazine contains within. In this episode she explains the inspirations that led to this unique magazine in disguise, as well as the technical difficulties of creating the object she wanted to make, and the challenges and opportunities that come from working in Athens these days.
I spoke to Natassa at the EDCH conference in Munich, and this is the last of our episodes from there – you can hear more conversations from EDCH, plus lots more independent magazine makers speaking about the things they do, by taking a look back at our archives on Soundcloud or iTunes, and of course if you follow us while you’re there we’ll be able to send our future episodes to you as soon as they’re ready.
