Colophon, 2008
Magazine favourite(s) from your childhood?
Ranger Rick, MAD.
Magazine favourite(s) that inspired you in your career?
Emigre, Dazed & Confused (when Rachel Newsome was editor.)
Magazine favourite(s) now?
HTV (Amsterdam.)
What else inspires and informs you?
Dog Day Afternoon.
Proudest moment of your career in magazines.
When Math (a fanzine on the mythologies of human penis size) developed a huge following of US prisoners after being reviewed in Factsheet Five.
Why?
The fan mail was inspiring. Especially because the prison population was an unexpected audience.
Most well-known moment.
When we guest-designed Emigre magazine, issue 59.
Why is it so well known?
Readership of 40,000.
Most important lesson learnt, and from who/where?
Printers in Los Angeles don't like vaginas. (While trying to print issue 6 of v. Journal of Experimental Typography, over a dozen print shops refused to print our publication for content considered "vulgar".)
Do you keep old copies of magazines? If so, what is your favourite in your collection?
Whole Earth Catalog, and early issues of Vice (when it was still good.)
Choose three words to define your (favourite) magazine.
Free, free and free.
Why do you work in magazines?
Because nobody publishes the things we're interested in.
If currently involved in a magazine: What is the magazine about?
Books from The Future is a series of fanzines that experiment with narrative structure, typography and sound.
Who reads it?
They're as big of a question mark to us as we probably are to them.
How do you find innovative ways to talk to your readers?
By being independent.
What do you like about the challenge of working in magazines?
Magazines are ongoing, evolving, ever responding.
What don't you like about the challenge of working in magazines?
Funding.
In five years, what will you be working on?
Wait, is this a job interview?
We are compiling answers from some of the most innovative magazine makers around the world today. Who else should we ask?
HTV
Finally, please give us a brief outline of your career: When and where did you start working in magazines?
San Francisco, 1995.
What are the most significant titles you've worked on?
Emigre, v. Journal of Experimental Typography, Venice is not Sinking, Math.
What are you working on right now?
Books from the Future.
Yvan Martinez & Joshua Trees interviewed by Mike Koedinger. Colophon, Luxembourg, 2008