Hamburg, 8 June, third row. Eva, Florian, Rebecca and Anke stare at the screen. The hands sweaty, the knees trembling. 1000 of the most important media decision makers listen to Markus Peichl, chairman of the LeadAward jury, saying the key sentence: “The second nominee: CIRCUS, from Herznote publishing.”

Yes, indeed: CIRCUS #1 Fashion is one of the best new magazines of Germany. Nido and I like my style won the Lead Award in Gold, Beef and CIRCUS in bronze. This honor is, of course, due not only to us, but above all, you — all the bloggers and just to all who have supported CIRCUS and enriched our Bookazine with their article, their illustration, their photos and ideas. Thank you!

Cajoled like that we will send you on to inkubato , where youstill have 26 days left to preorder CIRCUS #2 Voyage and enable the production. . In the second edition of the Bookazine we will work together with bloggers again who create all the content exclusively for CIRCUS – as you know: We apply the Circus Seal of Quality: 100% fresh, 100% crisp and 100% produced without animal experiments.

By the way, that’s how it looks on the floor inside:

And that’s the fuchsia carpet outside:

(And that’s a happy Art Director.)

We love blogs – but instead of making you comb through a blog roll we introduce the bloggers to you in a more personal way. And at the same time we revive the old autograph book days. (Actually, we’re not sure if there are many places on earth that use a “Poesiealbum” like we Germans do. But I guess you’ll understand the principle anyway.)

You can take a peek at the album here. Some of the first appearances are Franzi of Indigoidian, Cam of Some Kind Of Style, Dorothy von very small array and Sarah of Madame La La. If you also want to take part. Just email us. A few pages are still avaliable.

Finally, we have fresh copies of CIRCUS Fashion again. So do not hesitate and order another bookazine. Soon the first edition might be exhausted for good.

Our photographer Adeline Mai has felt the magic of the woods as well – readers of CIRCUS could already see it printed, but she made a film as well! You’ll find more videos in her Vimeo channel and on her blog.

Gaddafi is one of 13 heads that adorn the CIRCUS card game. There, he rules over one game card only, thank God. The card game we give to you right now: You can download the template here and craft the cards yourself.

If you also want to own the original illustration of Gaddafi (format 40x60cm) and even the CIRCUS Voyage Limited Edition, you must answer one simple question:

What can you see on this Voyage-related picture? (click to enlarge)

We do not supply additional information, it would be too easy. But each 1000 € that we move closer to our goal, we uncover a further field.

The prize goes to the person who provides us with the correct solution first. We prefer an e-mail to hq@herznote.com.

The illustration we ship immediately, CIRCUS Voyage Limited Edition you hopefully get in fall.

“These posters are an exciting visiual history, capturing the pageantry and color that the circus was and is.
There are acrobats, elephants, tigers, lions, parades, tents, trains,and many specialized acts- May Wirth,
the Riding Rooneys, the Astounding Clarkonians, etc.”

And don’t miss: GARGANTUA, the world’s most terrifying living creature.

At this point I have to mention how dissappointed I am by other indie-magazines (CIRCUS is a bookazine, as we all know): they all should be able to tell a good story, but few of them actually do. Instead there either is a confusing arrangement of little facts and beautiful pictures – or boring stories are told over many pages, which suit the author but put the reader to sleep. Equally intelligent as funny stories – that’s something not many accomplish.

Here comes Teller: It’s a rich plate of reading material, full of short and long stories, funny at many times. It’s never superficial and diggs deaper than the usual „we are such inspired and creative minds“-stuff other publishers put out there. In Teller the art just happens, and is created in respect to content, not for making the magazine look like more than it is. I especially enjoyed „The best story I ever heard at a party“ by Crispin Dowler – because it sounds like an „urban legend“ but is too strange to be fake. And of course the text-photo-series by Nina Mangalanayagam, who takes the reader with her on a tamil family meeting.

You must have noticed by now: I love this magazine. That’s why I was especially pleased to find out that there is going to be a second issue soon. But the team needs the help of the readers. The Berlin based editor Ruby Russel and her colleagues startet a project on Kickstarter; just as CIRCUS did. There they offer some nice rewards – original prints from a photo series in issue #1, to just name one.

And since I am so hooked I thouht I should find out a little bit more. That’s why I asked Ruby some questions about the production, what she has planned for issue #3 and were she positions the magazine between journalism and narration.

Teller was published by Trolley Books. How did this collaboration work?
Trolley publish mainly art and photography books and are probably best known for important books of photojournalism. Trolley‘s ethos fits extremely well with Teller’s in that they focus on telling stories that need to be told, rather than a project’s commercial potential. Working with Trolley has allowed us to get Teller out to a much wider audience and benefit from their experience and recognition. 

The production was split between London and Berlin. How did you organize work with the guys from “Neue Gestaltung”?
From our first meeting with “Neue Gestaltung” we (myself and co-editor Katherine Hunt) realised they would play a major role in developing the whole concept of the magazine. I am based in Berlin and Katherine is based in London but comes over fairly frequently. When we can’t all meet together Katherine joins us over skype. Working with NG has been a wonderful experience and an education for us, and we consider Anna Bühler and Pit Stenkhoff (the team of NG, editor’s note) very much as equal partners in the Teller team.

How did you select the stories for issue #1? Were it pieces your friends already had written?
Some were friends, some were people we approached because we liked their work, some were strange things we stumbled across. We are extremely grateful to everyone who took a chance on the first issue of a new publication and made it something we’re really proud of.

It seems like you already have created issue #2. How fast will it be produced – if the full amount is pledged?
The layout is nearly there. The finished magazine should be in the shops by the end of May. We’re really excited about Kickstarter – we think it’s a great way to get independent projects off the ground and we are feeling pretty hopeful about reaching out target! Getting people to order their copy of the magazine in advance means we can put the full cover price towards production costs, and our contributors have been extremely generous in donating signed books and prints for larger rewards.

And do you even have things in mind for issue #3 already?
Very much so. We have several stories either confirmed or under consideration and are building up a bank of material – either completed stories that we are waiting for the moment to publish, or works in progress that we are following closely. Because we publish such a mix of stuff, there are some stories we have been given which are brilliant but which we couldn’t use yet because we haven’t found the right context for them in terms of the other material in an issue.

Do you have an alternative plan to Kickstarter?
We do have a few ideas up our sleeve … nothing confirmed yet.

Did you originally plan Teller #1 to be a profitable publication? 
No, not at all. Our first aim was to get the magazine out one way or another. The second is to make it pay for its own production. Once we achieve that we’ll start thinking about how to generate a bit of pocket money for ourselves and our contributors. As for turning a profit… we’re not even thinking about that yet.

Would Teller eventually be funded through advertising?
We’re not ruling it out completely. We don’t really want to get into selling advertising space, but we are exploring the idea of working with a limited number of regular sponsors.

Do you have a favorite story in issue #1?
That’s really impossible. But if I had to pick something, Charles Trotter’s images of Kenya in the 1950s are absolutely wonderful and it was really exciting to discover and publish such important work that had been seen by very few people.

Your stories aren’t officially categorized but the fit together very well. Is there a theme behind issue #1 like you plan with issue #2?
There was no theme for issue #1. Everything was about defining the kind of work we wanted to publish, trying to find the right tone and variety and making a diverse set of stories work together as a coherent whole.

Already in issue #1 there are a few stories starring animals. Do you or your co-editor have an especially strong interest in animals?
There’s a stupid cliche about needing animals in a story to create human interest, and we came across so many weird and wonderful stories involving animals that we decided to dedicate part of the second issue to them. Hopefully we will have got the animals thing out our system in time for issue #3!

Do you think, the content of Teller is journalism or prose? Or both?
Some of the stories we publish can be categorised as traditional journalism, others straight prose, some are purely visual – told in photographs, drawings or other media. But we are also really interested in the point where these categories blur – fiction based on true stories, stories that use the conventions of journalism to create works of fiction and stories that play with unusual ways of combining words and images.

Can you tell us something about how your own piece in issue #1 was done – the story about the old Augustine, who as an adult lived like a child with his mother and never went to school?
I met Augustine through a participatory arts project that was I running with photographer Kyna Gourley. We sat with him and listened to his stories for hours, met up with him many times and new details would emerge through his own inexplicable thought processes. And then I just wrote up what he told us and edited it down to the key points of the narrative. It’s all Augustine’s own words though, and I tried to keep his voice, because he’s such an amazing personality.

So, now that I let this all out  – I feel like a champion of print and I would like to yell: Leave the world wide web, enter a bookshop! But, if there would be a good reason for loving my computer and the web again…

It would be the gif animation. I love it. The movement. Wow! The loop. A status of trance.

For several minutes, just sitting in front of the computer. Doing nothing.

Oh, how great would a gif animation be in our Bookazine! But how? So I begin my search and start googling. I end up on this cool site: iamnotanartist. (It will remain my little secret which word I typed into the search field).

Gif me more information about iamnotanartist:

“A working in progress project comissioned by Elisava School of Design with concept, direction and design by creative Soon in Tokyo, a communication agency made up of former Elisava students and teachers. It starts with 56 animated gifs directed b Johnny Kelly and Matthew Cooper and aims to grow to be a platform with participation from all over the world. ” 

Confess your sins.

As you may know we’re working on an iPad version of CIRCUS #1 Fashion. Meanwhile we recommend Confessions: “Do you have a hard time keeping track of your sins? I know I do. Thankfully the Roman Catholic Church has officially endorsed this new iPhone app, called Confessions, to aid you in categorizing and listing your sins until your next confessional.” (nerve.com) Too bad that the vatican officially banned confession via the new app. We would have loved to recommend it to you, especially for our next topic:

Sex, sex, sex

When it comes to pop music like Rihannas I’m glad that I neither listen to the radio nor watch TV. Rihannas new video caught my attention when I was reading Bangs’ blog. It’s called “S&M” – it’s not hard to imagine what it is all about. “I thank everything holy I don’t have to raise a daughter. I can’t imagine coming home to find my kid singing about whips and chains and tying herself up because she saw Rihanna do it. It’s just too much, too soon. It’s not about being a prude or against sexual experimentation. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of, but it also doesn’t need to be paraded around on this kind of platform, packaged as bubblegum pop.” (Bangs and a Bun)

Move your ass!

Since 2007  Davey is dancing around the world – here’s his dance #100:

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Are you excited of Valentines Day? Not really? If you agree with us that it is the most overestimated holiday ever enjoy nerves’ Best of Craigslist Valentins Day special. But now that Ken tries to win Barbie back I might have to re-consider my aversion against the flower vendors’ day … or maybe not. However, have a look at these pictures by Mariel Clayton:

Yesterday we sent out our latest Newsletter – and you might have noticed that the kickstarter and autograph book links were missing. I won’t search for excuses, I admit that I totally forgot about it. But here they are: Support us at Kickstarter. And if you want to be part of our blogger autograph book contact us at hq@herznote.com