Following on from their OFFSET panel on Contemporary Magazine Culture, Rob Alderson, of It’s Nice That and Printed Pages, caught up with 2015 speaker Matt Willey to discuss his latest venture in the magazine world.
Formerly a creative director and a founder of Port, but now based in New York as part of Gail Bichler’s design team at The New York Times Magazine, Matt has just launched a new magazine with Port co-founder Dan Crowe and polar explorer Ben Saunders.
Avaunt is ‘a world of adventure, innovation, nature, style and culture through print, digital and live events’. A bi-annual publication, Avaunt, caters for the explorers, geographers and scientists among us with a mix of sport, style, adventure, striking photography and in-depth features, all displayed in a beautiful and clean Willey-esque fashion.
After seemingly finding a perfect fit for his editorial talents in New York, Rob asks why Matt would again enter the challenging world of magazine publishing, to which he replies:
“Because magazines are exciting things. Because I’m not sure if I know how to do anything else. Because things being ‘challenging’ is often a part of things being worthwhile”
Willey goes on to compare Port to his latest endeavour stating that launching a new title in 2011 is easier due to the lessening of noise around the idea that ‘print is dead’ that accompanied the iPad release, and also because they are no longer new to this game. Another distinction for Avaunt is that it’s going have an annual event as well as a much vaster presence online. The printed object is just one part of many.
As for the name, avaunt is a Middle English word that means ‘to the front’. A title suggested by writer and editor, Jolyon Webber, Matt was drawn to it because ‘of the AVA part being like mountains’ and in turn spent weeks conjuring up terrible logos.
Since the launch last month, Avaunt has received a warm welcome and today magCulture even named it Magazine of the Week.
Avaunt is available to order online here.
Follow Avaunt on Twitter and Instagram.
OFFSET photography by Oliver Smith.
Avaunt images from magCulture review and Avaunt.