by Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) An unusual Czech design magazine has launched a matchmaking service for creative talents and brands. Meanwhile, the magazine’s editor, Adéla Kudrnová, makes a strong case for the renaissance of print.
Mindtravellers is a new online platform that links creative people with brands, agencies and other potential employers. Based in the Czech Republic, it officially launches at the Mouvo motion design festival in Prague on 19 March 2016. The platform’s creation owes a great deal to Adéla Kudrnová, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Soffa magazine.
Educated in Sweden, Kudrnová originally wrote a design blog in Swedish, before returning to the Czech Republic to work on design magazines, notably Elle Decoration. But she felt that these magazines weren’t celebrating Czech design with as much passion as it merited. So, with a couple of like-minded friends (art director Lenka Hlaváčová and photographer Lina Németh) she launched Soffa in December 2013, initially as an online magazine.
“When would a print version come out?”
“It had to be online at first because we were just three friends trying to start something new, and this way there were no costs,” she says. “But, even after the very first online issue, people started asking us when a print version would come out.”
After 12 months and six online issues, a print version of Soffa was launched — in English (the online version is in both Czech and English). “We wanted to distribute worldwide and spread Czech culture. Scandinavian design is really well-known, but there are lot of great things happening here, too. We’re a magazine run by Czechs and Slovaks, and we’re proud of our creative community,” she says.
Kudrnová’s experience has shown her that “print is absolutely not dead”, as she puts it: “If anything, it’s experiencing a renaissance. People love having a magazine in their hands. It’s been positively received by our advertising partners, too. Once you have a print version, you really exist. It’s far more prestigious.”
Custom advertising spreads
Rather like the UK-based Monocle magazine, Soffa is unusual in that it creates custom advertising spreads for clients, rather than running their existing print ads. “They’re part of the content of the magazine. Everything is 100% original.” The editorial team also refuses to take PR handouts. “All the photography is either taken or commissioned by ourselves.”
Soffa sees itself as a hybrid of a magazine and a creative agency — hence Mindtravellers. Kudrnová explains: “When we started Soffa, right from the second issue we began receiving submissions from artists and photographers. I thought it was a shame the most of them were just sitting in my email or in a sort of private catalogue.”
Brands, too, would approach her asking how they could give their ads the “Soffa touch”. She shared her thoughts with Roman Číhalík, creative director of local agency, Nydrle, which often works on projects with Soffa. “He told me they were always looking for fresh talents, so that’s how the idea for the platform was born, as a joint initiative. It took about a year to get off the ground, but during that time we got more and more submissions.”
Simple idea
The idea is simple: creative talents upload their portfolios and agencies, and brands can visit when they’re looking for people to collaborate on a project. They can also study a map of where the creatives are located. Some of the artists on the platform have also designed promotional layouts for the magazine (above).
“This is not just a Czech project,” she says. “We want this to be an introduction platform for creative people across the entire world.”
Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) is the editorial director of the Epica Awards (@EpicaAwards), the only global creative prize judged by the specialist press. A British journalist based in Paris, Tungate is also the author of six books about branding and advertising, including Luxury World and Adland: A Global History of Advertising. He has a weekly column in the French magazine, Stratégies, and has written for leading newspapers and magazines in the UK and the US.
This “Global Headline Makers” column, which profiles creative stars making headlines in their home markets, is syndicated monthly from Epica.
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