Arts
Dead Sexy Magazine Debuts
It's no secret that launching a magazine is akin to a death wish these days. As much fun as they're to use as office and bathroom decor, they're dying both north and south of the border as advertising dries up, costs escalate and readership migrates to the web. So it's no surprise that those in love with the look of a magazine are trying to make a go of it with online interpretations.
The latest one of these online magazines to cross my radar is called Dead Sexy. It promises to launch in cities around the world, but for now we have a Toronto version and its debut issue just hit the interweb this month.
Like the many online magazines that have preceded it, it's heavy on the photography, light on the word count and is all about scrolling across the screen to flip between pages.
Because I'm a sucker for anything Toronto culture, I'm a fan of the first issue. I like its photos of Ossington, profile on Ezra's Pound and feature on the Gladstone's Christina Zeidler. They also take a look at Meta Gallery, FAT and Sukhothai. Of course, I'm linking to related content on blogTO because one of the issues with this format is that you can't hyperlink to specific pages of their magazine. There's also no RSS, no hyperlinks within the articles and no ability to add a comment. Basically, everything that's great about the web - and reading content like this online - isn't available.
And that makes me worried. The world is already fretting about the print magazine death spiral, I'd hate to see the process get repeated for these aspirational online versions.
Discussion
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I guess Sexy 2.0 didn't quite get enough votes in the internal brainstorming.
Best of luck, but you need a lot more meat on the bones than this.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt until I see the second issue. Good luck!
Still - aside from the pretty pictures, this thing is a piece o' crap. Awful format, and stunningly bad writing aside from one or two articles that are bearable. Completely vapid.
But then again, vapid is what seems to sell nowadays... sigh.
Thanks Tim for the kind mention, its much appreciated but kinda surprising considering how "new" we are. We are getting daily feedback and constantly making upgrades to the site. We WANT to make it better and maybe it wasn't quite "ready" for a professional review. But hey when you throw yourself onto the web, thats how it shakes out so its all good.
We aren't some big media conglom (we are just 2 guys doing everything) that thinks it is all that and we strive to offer the best experience to our readers!
Just to answer all the questions: "why another 'zine?" cue sigh, rolled eyes...
It's simple - we are in love with Toronto and all its ambitious people, places and things that are doing something interesting. As much as we are in love with BlogTo, our goal is to present a more photographic and scenic Toronto without all the politics and drama. We want to highlight local talent in a more photographic way without information overload. (There is already enough raw info out there).
We also want to only present original (recent) photographs using young local talent. We could have gone the stock photo route like so many other mags and blogs but we believe in the talent and want to show them off!
We don't want intensive articles, cause again you can get that elsewhere, our format is to just present what you need to know!
As for the name we aren't in the business of taking ourselves so seriously so the title is meant to be tongue in cheek.
As for why Ossington? "Done to death". Believe it or not, all you jaded downtowners would be knocked over to learn how many times daily I am asked about what is going on, where to go out in this great city of ours.. Not everyone is as plugged in and aware of what is going on in all the everchanging parts of the city as you dear BlogTO regulars. Many of my friends are from out of town, country and continent and don't always want to read BlogTO, Now or other content heavy media.
Resources such as BlogTo are wonderful but can be a daunting read to someone visiting the city. More than a few times I have had friends tell me that the comments sections make Torontonians seems really meanspirited and it's a challenge to convince them Toronto is worth a visit! We want to avoid that and just try to present Toronto and a selection of our other fav cities. Yeah nowhere is perfect, but we have all the traditional media pointing out Toronto's shortcomings on a daily basis.
We aren't trying to reinvent the wheel here, just to present the people, places and things in Toronto we love!
cheer up and love all.
TJ
P.S. there are hyperlinks to every place, person we profiled. Maybe it needs to be more apparent? thanks!
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