Course Syllabus
Magazine, an English word, originates from the Arabic makhzan, and originally meant "warehouse." The term appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine in London in 1731, where it was used for the first time to refer to regular continuous printed matter containing various content. The first magazine in the world appeared at an earlier time, but was called a “journal”––the literary and scientific journal Le Journal des sçavans, founded by French writer and jurist Denis de Sallo in 1665. As such, it can be said that magazines have existed in human history for less than 400 years. As a medium for expressing ideas, spreading information, and uniting communities, magazines can still be classified as something modern. Even after new media emerged, and people have increasingly begun to worry about "the end of print," the time has not yet arrived to discuss "extinction."
The magazines published all over the world over the past 300 years are many, but the Isogloss Workshop only focuses on the independent magazines that are outside the large media industry. They have usually been initiated by individuals or small groups. Out of minority interests and concerns, they pay attention to style, are distributed independently, have a small circulation, and even have very short lifecycles. However, they are effective media for uniting peers and building communities, and some have become important carriers, impetus for schools in literature, art, and thought. Some of them were the outgrowths of blocked publishing channels, while others were creative experiments and spaces for speech begun in a different ways than usual in the staid commercial publishing environment. Even if their field of vision was limited to small, unpopular fields, what they accomplished in the history of world publishing has remained inexhaustible.
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¹ Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, Volume 1, 1741-1850 (Harvard University Press, 1930), 6.
² In the 1990s, David Carson, the designer of Ray Gun magazine—one of the most visually radical publications of the decade—titled his first monograph, created in collaboration with design critic Lewis Blackwell, The End of Print (Chronicle Books, 1995).
Schedule
After registration closes, the personal profiles of all Research Fellows will be published on isogloss.org and included in the Isogloss Workshop 2025 Handbook. The names of donors, including those who contributed labor within the Isogloss Collective, will also be acknowledged on the website and in the handbook.
Course Facilitators
Aurelia DOCHNAL｜杜瑞鹂
LI Jiaoyang｜李骄阳
OU Ning｜欧宁
WANG Lin｜王琳视觉设计师
Visual Designers
Xiaoma + Chengzi｜小马+橙子