200%
A bookazine about creative passionate people in the realms of fashion, art, music and film.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Carnapstraat 145, 1062 KZ
Email: mail@200-percent.com
- Category: Art, Cinema, Fashion, Music
- Periodicity: Annual
- Language: English
- Format: 230 x 300 mm
- Price: 24.50 €
- Web: http://www.200-percent.com
Founded in 2006
After watching the director Francis Ford Coppola in the documentary 'Heart of Darkness' it inspired us to start 200% a bookazine entirely about passionate creative people. 200% offers an insight into their lives and thought processes and shows their total commitment and dedication to their work.
Exclusive Interview
200 %
What is your magazine about?
200% is entirely devoted to creative passionate people. We focus especially on the visual arts, fashion, music and film. The level of passion we?re talking about is the level of inspiration that director Francis Ford Coppola reveals in the film documentary ?Heart of Darkness? about the making of ?Apocalypse Now? ? his unique version of Joseph Conrad?s great novel. In every interview, 200% captures the individual identity, passions and motives of the interviewee.
Who?s behind the project? Tell us about the founders, their backgrounds and their motivations?
200% was founded by Thierry Somers. He is the editor-in-chief/publisher and art-director of the magazine. Somers started his career as an art-director in advertising and in 2000 he made a career move and became the art-director of Esquire. In order to get that position he produced a lay-out dummy of a magazine about creative passionate people which he presented to the publisher of Esquire. After three years working for Esquire he became a freelance art-director working for several glossy magazine titles. He also toyed with the idea about creating 200% and when he approached three possible interviewees who all said yes instantly, he decided to produce an issue. The first issue was published in May 2006. The second issue was published in May 2007. The third issue was published in September 2008.
How do you produce one issue? How much time do you spend on it? How big is your team?
During the course of the year 200% travels all over the world to interview people. The criteria for a feature about a person is whether we get passionate about the interviewee's passion. Like the interviewees who dedicate all their time to their work we dedicate all our time in producing the best magazine we can. The 200% team consists of 4 people: the founder, two feature writers who also edit 200%, one person who produces the 200% website and a few freelance contributors.
What have been the important steps in the life of your magazine?
First step, obviously the first issue, you're alive. So many creatives around the world are full of interesting ideas, and when they tell you about them you think. Wow, that is a great idea! But nine out of these ten ideas are not being realised and they stay in a drawer. 200% started as an idea in someone's head, but its an idea that?s been brought to fruition. It was a matter of just getting started and as the artist Eiko Ishioka told us the essential factor to realising one's work is self-discipline.
Secondly, the feedback from our readers. In the editorial of 200% we mention the idea behind the magazine: 200% is a publication about sharing the same things, experiences and values. The perfumier Francis Kurkdjian, who features in the first issue says: Personally, I'm not very much interested in cars, but I'm interested in the passionate man a car designer talking about cars. So even though you don't share the same subject, you share the same perception being passionate about what you're doing. From readers we receive the same kind of feedback. One of them wrote us: I've just finished reading 200% from cover to cover. I don't know the last time I actually read every single article of a magazine and I'm a bit sorry that I have finished because it?s like when you come to the end of something you?ve really enjoyed you don't quite know what to do with yourself. I am totally impressed with what 200% managed to accomplish here. I knew I would be intrigued by the interviews with Matt Johnson, Antony Price and Robert Del Naja, but what I didn't expect is that I would be completely engrossed in absolutely all of the articles.
What are the key ingredients for the success of your magazine?
200% interviews our interviewees extensively. Sometimes we meet with them three or four times. We allow all the interviewees to talk about what they are really, truly passionate about, because when someone is able to do that then it?s going to engage the interest of others. All of the people featured in 200% were able to stay true to themselves and their work and allow the reader to gain an insight into what drives them to do what they do. One readers writes: ?I also felt that I was being positively fed information which can add value to my life and knowledge-base and 200% manages to reconnect me with the things I find important in life.
What are the difficulties you are confronted with? What would be the thing to help the magazine to improve?
The people we interview for 200% are busy people with full agenda's. When we approach them, usually they are interested to contribute, but it's difficult to find the time when to make the final appointment for an interview. Besides that the staff of 200% is small so we can only produce one issue a year to achieve the quality level we're aiming for. This means that there isn?t a regular flow of 200% at the newsstand and it's difficult for the title to be on the radar of the reader. So we're looking for ways to be able to publish 200% bi-annually.
Where do you want the magazine to be in five years?
In five years time we want 200% to be bi-annual. Also we hope that we?re still able to approach 200% as open-minded, as fresh and as energetic as we did with the first issue.
What question did you never ask in your magazine but would have liked to?
We can only tell you what question we have never asked and we have no intention of ever asking it. As 200% writes entirely about creative passionate people there is one question we have never asked our interviewees: Tell us, what's your passion? We believe it will only produce a banal answer and will make the interviewee stumble over his words and ideas, or worse still, lose interest in the interview. We do extensive research before an interview so when we meet with the interviewee we can start talking with him with the confidence that one knows what to ask in order to bring out the best in the interviewee. This will invariably produce a fruitful conversation and interview, leading to an intresting and thought-provoking article. We believe that good preparation is vital on so many levels, not least because it is simple good manners and is always highly appreciated by the interviewee.
Tell us about your audience! Who are the readers of your magazine?
The 200% reader (split evenly between males and females) is a very passionate personality and wants to be inspired by the passions of others. He has a creative job or devotes his spare time to creative pursuits. He is demanding, dedicated and eager to explore in new directions. An enthusiastic and inspired thinker among his acquaintances. An influential ?early adapter? who has an open mind for new things. He appreciates things that are done with love and care and likes to share those experiences with others. Originality, depth, sophistication and elegance are very important to him. He is cosmopolitan, aged between 28 and 45. He demands a magazine made to the highest standards, content driven and with committed, unconventional journalism; qualitative and experimental photography and illustration; conceptual and interactive lay-outs.
Is remaining independent important to you? Is it part of the strategy?
The artist Richard Phillips, who features in the first issue, wrote to us in response to the first issue: ?I find it very rare indeed (if ever) that a magazine is able to reach this level of quality and integrity. Journalistic integrity and independency is crucial for us to be able to stay true to our principles and express the passion of the interviewee in the best way.
What's your relationship with advertisement? Does it influence your content? Do you care about advertising-driven-editorials?
200% is aiming for advertisers who show as much passion for their product, branding and advertising campaigns as the people who feature in 200% show for their work. When the advertisers care about these values we don?t see this will influence our editorial content.
What is your relationship with your printer? Does he play a main role in your development?
Yes, the role of the production company and the printer of 200% is very important. They are striving in their field of expertise to achieve a 200% quality level. On the advice of the production company, the second edition of 200% has been printed in Frequency Modulated screening. As it is a much finer screening it avoids moiré patterns and the photography and illustrations in 200% can be printed with much more detail. This, in combination with the high quality paper we selected, ensures that 200% is printed to the standards of an art-book. We want 200% to have the longevity of an art book, that readers will keep and put proudly on their book shelves.
Which magazines influence you most? What are you looking for in other magazines?
The period when Alexey Brodovitch was the art-director of Harper?s Bazaar, the first 4 years of Andy Warhol?s Interview, the period when Fabien Baron was the creative director of Italian Vogue, Esquire in the 60s and the early days of The Face. Now The New Yorker, i-D and Self Service magazine.
For 200% these are magazines that have a vision, a spirit and posses a certain creative flow and energy. They make a self-willed and adventurous selection out of the areas they are writing about. They also interpret something, they are curious, make connections, signal cultures movements and have a voice of their own.
What do you think of your issue 01, when you look back at it?
A few months after we published the first issue of 200% we went to an exhibition about magazines in New York. The exhibition contained a collection of first editions of now well-established magazine titles. What surprised us, even amazed us, was that a lot of these first editions looked very naïve, kind of schoolpaper-ish and were poorly printed. It made us very proud that our first issue looked much more grown up, in lay-out and content, and was also professionally printed. On the other hand, it made us also realise that some of these publications have developed themselves tremendously and are now established titles at the newsstands with a loyal reader base. Kudos for them!
How many magazines do you buy / get / read each month? Do you qualify yourself as a maniac?
Maybe five or six a month, whilst once a week we spend an hour at the newsstands flipping through magazines and searching for new titles. Funny thing is that we find more inspiration outside the magazine world, for instance, a book about philosophy, watching a film on a dvd with the directors commentary on or flipping randomly through piles of cds at a record store. After all, if 200% limited its inspiration to other magazine sources, then inevitably it would struggle to be much different from those other magazines.
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