As a follow-up to my little rant on the latest issue of RELAX yesterday, I’ve just learned that the magazine will soon cease publication. Can’t say that I’m really surprised (or saddened) by the news.
Update
Marxy writes a nice eulogy.
2006.06.15
Responses:
Reply:
Jean Snow lives and breathes design and pop culture in Tokyo -- sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for the following online/offline publications: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Game|Life, and The Japan Times. He also manages the gallery space at Cafe Pause.
Jean Snow is a daily contributor to Wired magazine's game blog, Game|Life, covering game news from Japan and beyond.
Tokyolife: Art and Design covers Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives. Jean Snow provided coordination assistance.
The Superfuture Superguides are a series of PDF travel guides to some of your favorites cities, updated monthly, and obsessively compiling the best places to shop, eat, and drink. The Tokyo guide is edited by Jean Snow.
He is also the design/culture editor at Neojaponisme, a web journal covering social and cultural aspects of Japan. Read the manifesto, by founder and chief editor W. David Marx, here.
PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens August 4 (there is no July edition).
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Oh my, end of an era!
First Olive, now Relax… Shibuya-kei really is dead! How long do H, Barfout and Studio Voice have?
Actually this will be the 2nd time that they have stopped. I’m with you Jean, Relax died for me a few years back around issue #60 or so. I used to be an avid reader but now just flick thru at the 7/11 when if there is nothing else to read.
From that Marxy post’s comments: “Relax readers may, like Jean Snow, simply have grown out of Relax and into these more upmarket, more materialistic, more design-oriented titles”. (MOMUS).
What say you?
Yeah, in part, I think it’s a fair assessment, but there’s no denying that RELAX has changed a lot in the past year or so (after the original editor left), and today’s RELAX does not at all ressemble the RELAX of 2-3 years ago. I think I would still enjoy a RELAX that devotes an issue to MOS Burger, and stuff like that.