By Rebecca Ceccatelli.

Each number that increases the last digit of the current year seems to confirm a continuous technological progress that leaves little room for a return to tradition in various fields, least of all in publishing. The world of indie magazines, fanzines, and editorials is increasingly oriented towards online sharing, driven by the need to save paper resources and a focus on sustainability, as well as the rapid, fast, and accessible sharing it enables.
While traditional magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue will always have their physical editions – in addition to digital versions – unfortunately, emerging publications with increasingly tight budgets often opt to start with an online presence. They prefer to first reach a broader audience through virtual means that can already predict future progress before considering printed versions.

How an indie magazine will survive to digital era

The evolution of indie magazine in the digital age

In the past, everything began with paper. Paper provided a platform for experimentation, including collages, assemblages and layouts on computers, which by the way only served as a tool for the printed result.
It is for this reason that in the 2020s, we could contemplate what new experiments could revitalise traditional print publications.
Visionary Minds #3 once again explores the complexity of publishing in our millennium in its third edition, showcasing each year indie magazines and the creations of the students from the Multimedia Arts, Arts Curating and Fashion Styling & Creative Direction courses at Istituto Marangoni Florence. The event took place at the Fashion Room bookstore in Florence (Via del Prato 7/r) on July 3, featuring a variety of books, from indie fashion magazines to publications, prompting reflection on the enduring presence of printed papers in a digital era. But how?

Indie fashion magazines: the power of specificity

The power of a indie magazine lies in the voice it assumes. Not only is this voice expressed through the words of the articles within it, but it also incorporates images, colours, fonts, and symbols to convey a message. Often, in broad magazines with multiple sections, many voices come together to offer their own columns to a wide audience, allowing everyone to find something relatable, and no one is left out. However, having multiple voices can also be chaotic. And if you were particularly interested in one of those voices, imagine how compelling it would be to have an entire magazine focused solely on that one!
This is why independent magazines can offer a solution to the massive production of generic magazines. The Fashion Styling & Creative Direction 2 students explored a variety of specific themes for their magazines, including menswear and the redefinition (and subversion) of virility (Elettra Lipiello, VIR – Matilde Nuti, Haka!), unconventional forms of paper printing used as inspiration (tarot cards for Margherita Materassi in 79, and the cookbook for Natalia Rodriguez Gasperin in Dough), as well as taboo topics like nudity (Rebecca Marzano, Soma) and rebellious youth (Nicole Cannavaro, Naiph – Emma Innocenti, Rush). 

Designed to evolve with each new edition, the power of specificity sets one stone apart from the rest on a beach. While I might prefer a regular, smooth one, you might probably snub it for an irregular, rough one. This is the goal of an indie fashion magazine: to cater to diverse tastes by taking the time to explore and delve into each aspect. Perhaps it is this determination and perseverance that may lead people to purchase the new content-rich editions in the following months, semesters, or years. 
Moreover, the sense of community that forms around each of these magazines adds extra value to what a book can offer. A community always fosters new ideas, concepts, and a sense of belonging, transforming a simple publication into something more than just an object—it almost becomes a cult.

Artistic experiments in publishing: the future of art books

On the other hand, if the world of indie magazines often exists to express a particular style in fashion, the concept that immediately comes to mind when the two words ‘art’ and ‘book’ are associated is the artist’s book. And who said that an artistic concept cannot be represented precisely by a series of pages to be flipped through? Can an artist’s book exist without traditional pages to turn? At Fashion Room, the Art Department 2023-24 had the opportunity to present its unconventional interpretation of pages-that-are-not-pages in a monumental display.
Curatorial projects dominated the department’s table. They organised selected works on various themes, from provincialism (Giulia Piceni, Provinciale) to migration (Camila Heredia Oranday, Con El Nopal En La Cara), interspersed with ring-bound books, archives of personal photographs reinterpreted for a broader audience (Rebecca Ceccatelli, Panorama. Dove sono le montagne) and true calendars of definitions (Li Zecong, 艺术 (yì shù)). Also present were whimsical children’s books serving as witnesses for a grey future (Antonella Ignacia Ramos Panace, Memories of the Future) and darkly reimagined newsletters (Mary M. Mitchem, Our Burning Pile Served with a Bow). Additionally, there were posters ready to immortalise thermographic photographs straddling life and death (Asia Niero, Spifferi) and the digestion of consumerism that corrodes our society (Armando Aureliano Sauzullo, A God Shaped Hole).

This is because, in the future of art publishing, there will be no strict rules dictating canons of perfect binding and mathematical precision. On the contrary, there will be more room for experimentation, allowing for a revival of the ancient tradition of printing. Printed art will have a unique presence that cannot be replicated in digital form; it truly comes to life when it takes on a physical form. One striking example of this is Isabella Trew’s List of Lists, a 4mx1m banner featuring lists that capture the sense of accumulation found in her phone notes.

The revival of indie magazines through innovation

The survival of print depends on its vitality. Printing doesn’t just end when the ink is applied to paper; rather, that is when it comes to life. We’ve made significant progress since the time art was limited to paintings. So why dismiss the idea that an artist’s book can be one of their most important artworks?

Visionary Minds #3: inspiring hope for print publishing for future

Certainly, Marangoni students could not provide absolute solutions to solve the fading of printed material into obscurity. Still, they have definitely revived the hope of all book enthusiasts who need to experience the scent of new paper pages before reading, fostering the innate sensation that we develop as children towards books. In the hope that it could be rekindled whenever we want to discuss art and fashion, Visionary Minds #3 has certainly stirred our senses for a night. The publishing industry still exists, and it is here among us.