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Mary Hessing www.woth.co

Joined forces

By 31-08-2016

ONE WEEK ABOUT WOTH Wonderful Things Magazine by Mary Hessing

With the idea in mind of a magazine about creatives, we asked everyone we ever worked with to contribute their work/expertise. The result was that WOTH right away became a project supported by many people.

About parallel with the development of the logo I approached Jaap van Triest for the basic design of the pages. Jaap is a genuine typographer and book designer, but he’s not introverted and has an almost encyclopedic memory in the field of typographic details in magazines and newspapers. WOTH urgently needed a different look which certainly should not be an easy glossy-look-alike with a Divot typeface or something of the kind.

At the same time, we didn’t want a high-end-difficult-to-understand-this magazine-is-only-for-the-happy-few-like appearance either, like you see at so many independent magazines.

Once Van Triest had set up a basic master for the pages and had selected the Arnhem by Fred Smeijers, we continued developing on the level of sections. We found graphic designer Wilmar Grossouw willing to do part of the job. Also Swan Lian Kwee, my former art director at Eigen Huis & Interieur, has with her expertise contributed to the concept. After the first sessions, the cooperation about the look-and-feel continued from a distance, online, which goes very well nowadays.

Also the editorial content came about in a similar way. Virtually every article was written by a different author. Due to this pluralism of tone of voice and the large number of creatives that we portray, WOTH has become a magazine with many voices. We find this an enrichment – but of course, it’s up to the readers to decide this for themselves in September. Consistent value in the first part of the magazine (‘People’) are the photo portraits made by Jan Willem Kaldenbach.

There are also a personal contributions: columns and essays add the necessary color. Job Smeets, for example, shares funny memories in a column about the monumental Mercedes’s and BMWs with which the eminent notables used to set their seal on the village of his youth. Wim Pijbes wrote a contribution on the transition of the Rijks (the State Museum) to ‘his’ new Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar. Jaap Biemans, also known as ‘Coverjunkie’, writes about covers, of course. Willem van Roosmalen of website Fontanel presents an illustrator of his choice. And we show a photo strip by the amiable Iwan Baan, a world famous photographer who ever since graduating from the art academy has been flying around the world in helicopters to photograph architecture.

L’Union fait la force, strength through unity. Many hands make light work, although that is not literally the case. WOTH is a punchy project in which powerful control and direction are quite essential. And even though this is only the beginning, WOTH Wonderful Things works as a kind of positive movement propagated by many.

Portraits: Brenda van Leeuwen