Where do I begin when talk­ing about the Mon­o­cle?  Well, a good place to start is per­sonal feel­ings: the Mon­o­cle is my absolute favourite mag­a­zine.  I was first intro­duced to it by Tris­tan, per­haps this time last year.  Imme­di­ately I took notice of the magazine’s clean, sleek, and sexy design.  In fact, I don’t even think ‘mag­a­zine’ is an apt name for the Mon­o­cle– per­haps some­thing like ‘monthly book of awe­some’ is more fit­ting?  Haha, maybe not…  Before I go on a tan­gent I must say that the Mon­o­cle is con­sis­tently leav­ing me amazed each and every month: it is a won­der­ful source of infor­ma­tion, rang­ing from world pol­i­tics to national affairs, fash­ion, gad­getry, and much much more.  The design of the mag­a­zine is per­haps it’s strongest trait: I am left inspired with the turn of each page.  Here is Monocle’s own brief:

Launched in Feb­ru­ary 2007, Mon­o­cle is a global brief­ing cov­er­ing inter­na­tional affairs, busi­ness, cul­ture and design. Head­quar­tered in Lon­don with bureaux in Tokyo, Syd­ney, Zürich and New York, Mon­o­cle appears 10 times a year in print and is updated con­stantly at monocle.com. Devel­oped for an inter­na­tional audi­ence hun­gry for infor­ma­tion across a vari­ety of sec­tors, Monocle’s team of award-winning edi­tors and cor­re­spon­dents have been drawn from The New York Times, The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day, the BBC, CBC and a host of other news and cur­rent affairs out­lets. More of a book than a mag­a­zine, Monocle’s designed to be highly portable (it’s light­weight and com­pact) and col­lec­table (it’s thick and robust). On-line, the focus is on broad­cast­ing with a wide array of films, slide shows and audio reports. Edited by Wall­pa­per* founder andFinan­cial Times colum­nist Tyler Brûlé, Mon­o­cle offers a com­pre­hen­sive global brief­ing under a sin­gle edi­to­r­ial brand. In print and online, writ­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers are dis­patched to over 50 coun­tries every issue to deliver sto­ries on for­got­ten states, allur­ing polit­i­cal fig­ures, emerg­ing brands, fresh forces in pop­u­lar cul­ture and inspir­ing design solutions.

Each issue has five sec­tions, sep­a­rated by let­ters, and most issues come with a bonus insert (things rang­ing from “city sur­veys” to “style guides”) and a Japan­ese Manga titled “Kita Koga” penned exclu­sively for Mon­o­cle by Takanori Yasaka.  I’ve pro­vided a short lit­tle break-down of each sec­tion, so you under­stand exactly what is included in a Mon­o­cle release:

Sec­tion A deals with ‘affairs,’ rang­ing from worldly debates to those on a more national level.  If you want to know what is going on around the globe, sec­tion A is where you’ll find out.
Sec­tion B deals with ‘busi­ness,’ deal­ing with all those mat­ters con­cern­ing finance, money, cor­po­rate image, and so on and so forth.  Sec­tion A and B often con­verge, as you’d imag­ine.
Sec­tion C deals with ‘cul­ture,’ and usu­ally takes a look at firms, peo­ple, places, and every­thing con­nected to the var­i­ous soci­eties that com­pose our globe.
Sec­tion D con­cerns ‘design,’ which takes a look all the cut­ting edge, inno­v­a­tive, and intrigu­ing ele­ments going on in regards to a design­ing per­spec­tive.  (This sec­tion is usu­ally my favourite– it is fas­ci­nat­ing to see what some of the peo­ple are com­ing up with in our world, as well, I take fash­ion rather seri­ously and they always pro­vide menswear and wom­enswear edi­to­ri­als with won­der­fully shot pho­tographs of mod­els and qual­ity cloth­ing– read it and take note of the well-crafted styles they cre­ate).
The final sec­tion is E, which Mon­o­cle calls “edits,” where they throw every­thing else in that they can.  Often in this sec­tion are beau­ti­ful pho­to­graph arti­cles and hands-on expe­ri­ences from the Mon­o­cle staff.  Always a must read.

I really do not give the jus­tice that this ‘monthly book’ deserves.  Please, if this at all inter­ests you, go and pur­chase an issue, I guar­an­tee you will not regret it.  Stop buy­ing those ‘GQs’ or ‘Cos­mopoli­tans,’ you deserve bet­ter things to read, and the Mon­o­cle is that bet­ter thing you’ve been look­ing for.  If the mag­a­zine isn’t enough to tickle your fancy, then the Mon­o­cle also has a top class web­site (linked at the begin­ning), con­stantly updated with all their infor­ma­tion.  As well, they release pod­casts and videos online too (just check­out iTunes)- I’m famil­iar with these and they never fail to leave me impressed.

The Mon­o­cle doesn’t just stop at being a high-class mag­a­zine, it also has stores located all over the world (Lon­don, New York, Tokyo, and Zurich + sea­sonal stores, the next planned to reside in Hong Kong).  They sell their own ‘Monocle-Branded’ prod­ucts, rang­ing from qual­ity tote bags to bicy­cles and even note­books.  As well, they stock qual­ity brands and prod­ucts that the staff have dis­cov­ered.  I’ve never been to one (I hope to change that soon) but from what I’ve seen they seem like great lit­tle bou­tique styled stores.

Here’s a cool lit­tle video I dis­cov­ered that fea­tures a freshly pur­chased Mon­o­cle (ordered at The Mon­o­cle Shop) being unwrapped.  Look at the qual­ity that this com­pany strives to deliver, it sim­ply blows my mind.  The video also pro­vides a look into what a Mon­o­cle actu­ally looks like inside (so you can get a peek at the ‘design’ that I’m talk­ing about):

Unwrap­ping Mon­o­cle from Gym Class Mag­a­zine on Vimeo.

Don’t think that I’ve gone soft on you too…  I can’t help but share some great tunes for our read­ers in my posts, so this update is nonethe­less.  What do I like to lis­ten to when I’m brows­ing my new copies of the Mon­o­cle?  None other than Kings of Con­ve­nience.  Here are some great songs of theirs.  Enjoy!  Oh, and go buy a Monocle!

Down­loads:

1. Boat Behind — Kings of Convenience
2. Singing Softly to Me — Kings of Convenience
3. I’d Rather Dance With You — Kings of Convenience

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