Tyler Brule must be quite a character. After founding Wallpaper magazine, which was very much a move against the spirit of the times, he stretched things even firther in 2007 when he launched, Monocle, a 10-issue a year, non-regional magazine, available only in English, which has no Facebook or Twitter presence. It's a fascinating read, some have called it a mix of the Financial Times and Vanity Fair, thats pretty close--its commentary, politics, business, travel, culture, style, for a mobile global audience. It's easily dismissed as a chronicle for the upwardly mobile, but I think it offers a bit more than that in terms of its content. The magazines relationship with adverttising is also wuite unique, alongside tradtional magazine ads they also have advertorials--basically ads, often sponsored by countries, which are edited by the Monocle staff in the magazine's style--it isn't to hide the fact that it is advertising, it is simply applying other methodologies for the necessary content that allows a magazine to survive--no ads, no revenue basically.
The Monocle world has expanded to included occasional stores, there was one in Brentwood/Santa Monica for sometime, cafes and a 24-hour digital radio station--M24 (found on the website, monocle.com) which feels like a cross between NPR and the BBC World service if it was run by hipsters (I use that term in a positive rather pejorative way). There are interesting travelogue films and a host of other delights on the web, but the magazine is the anchor of the whole project.
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