Magazines! Yes, I’m reading magazines. Unapologetically.
The best magazine find so far has been Paste. The tagline is ‘Signs of life in music, film, and culture’. It comes with a cd full of music and sometimes, a dvd. The reviews do a good job of introducing new music– providing history, background and context. At least they do for me, someone who loves msuic but has huge holes in his knowledge of the last 50 years of music.
Anyway, Paste magazine. Highly recommended. It’s like having a literate, non-condescending knowledgeable music afficionado friend with bad taste in fonts give you music recommendations every couple months.
I still get res magazine, but the editorial quality in that thing continues to plummet. res feels like the newsletter for the terminally hip video/designer kids. I still enjoy it though, not for the articles, but for the dvd that comes to subscribers. My stack of res dvds is pretty thick, and it’s great to go back through the music videos and shorts for a look at a technique or fascinating story.
The next two mags don’t have much content, but they do have decently written articles.They are related to each other in that they are concerned with technique aspects of creating something that is both creative and commercial. Best of all, they are both free.
Game developer mag has post mortems on video game projects that are (to me) more interesting than the games themselves. Discussions of programming techniques, the business of games, and interviews make it fun read.
But DV mag I read cover to cover. Not hard, it’s a thin mag, but the articles are always brimming with practical experience. No rehashed press releases, just reviews from people with experience.
The common theme is media, especially learning how to manipulate media. This is definitely where my interests are these days.
Can’t wait to see how I’m going to usethis mishmash of interests.