Rove
Rove magazine cover.
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Rove magazine spread one.
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Rove magazine spread 2.
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Rove spread three.
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Rove spread four.
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Rove's website.
E USED to think of a “vertical” magazine as a publication like Sports Illustrated. Life was a horizontal, or mass. Now all the mass magazines are gone, and SI and Time and People are thought of as a general interest magazine. Some of the most interesting new magazines are super verticals.
The studio is getting involved in more and more of these. This fall, we’re helping relaunch Boxoffice, which goes from being theater monthly trade a “prosumer” movie magazine focussing on the distribution side—and a data-rich web site.
Another vertical venture is Rove, an ultra-high-end car magazine and web site. The site is also focussing on data, in this case the auction market for automobiles.
The design is by Robb Rice. Crystal Suggs did a quick launch web site. John Voelcker, who I’ve worked with is the editor.
This a particularly small market of readers, but a very desirable one, if, say, you are a private bank.
But the magazine crosses the guardrail in art direction. Rove doesn’t commission artwork, but actual cars. In the No. 0 Kenny Schachter, the publisher and editor, asked the architect, Zaha Hadid, to design a new car.
The result is a spectacularly swoopy trike, which was included in the Zaha retrospective that took over the entire Guggenheim this summer. If all goes well, subscriptions, event sponsorships and web advertising will be supplemented by art sales.
Now Kenny is talking about actually producing the car, a specials factory in Britain. But that’s another story.