In summer 2009 four young media go-getters decided to create something of greatness: the first international bloggers’ bookazine. A lunatic idea, said others. A tremendous idea, said they themselves so they went ahead and founded Herznote Publishing in February 2010.

Anke Schuhardt: “Rebecca, Florian and I study online-journalism and had already been reading blogs for  years. Since the three of us are very interested in fashion, the growing importance of fashion blogs attracted our attention. They were even presented in fashion magazines – but always just presented. Although there actually were some publications printing blog entries, bloggers never had the possibility to write longer articles for magazines and to be taken seriously as respectable journalists. That is why we decided: We want to change this!”

CIRCUS Fashion is the first issue of a special series: the bookazine’s timeless quality fulfills their requirements for a sustainable publishing work. It is a perfect symbiosis of a book and a magazine: high-quality, lasting content presented in an appropriate layout. “It is a statement against escalating waste-paper production on the media market,” says Florian Siebeck, “you won’t just throw CIRCUS away after a few days, since you can read it again and again.”

In the beginning, the team was scattered across the world – just like all the blogging contributors. “We were in Beijing, Dublin and Vienna, making the  company’s establishment pretty hard”, states Josef Mayerhofer, who stayed in Darmstadt while setting up the business. As soon as the team was assembled again it got started. “In the Kleinsche Höfe in Darmstadt we found the perfect working environment: many creative artists’ can be found here. You get a lot of inspiration”, says Anke Schuhardt.

It started internationally and still  is international. “We get e-mails by motivated creatives from all over the world everyday. Whether by a talented photographer from South Africa or a budding fashion journalist from New York”, states Rebecca Sandbichler. However, the editorial staff is culturally influenced, too: as well as Inga Schörmann and Eva Anhäuser, Kristine Biason from Sydney has been involved: “That’s why English is our working language”, says Florian Siebeck. “It’s not always nice to listen to a mixture of languages, but it works.”