The digital era that we’re living in has single-handedly changed the way we disseminate and consume culture. The days of having to venture to a corner store to get hip to the latest music and fashion are gone, replaced instead with the convenience of scrolling through a near-endless supply of websites meant to appeal to whatever aesthetic interests you at the moment, or worse, what some algorithm decides will appeal to you based on your rabid clicking habits.
But in our push for convenience, we’ve given up something that hardcopy magazines did well — curation — and with so much information out there it’s easy for the truly interesting stuff to get lost in the noise. But as we step toward a new decade, things seem to be changing. Like vinyl records, the appeal of hardcover magazines is morphing into something more interesting than it was prior to the digital age that sought to kill it. A cool object in the digital world.
In terms of reach or speed, no magazine will be more effective than the internet, it’s a fool’s errand to try. Instead of fighting that battle, magazines are going the boutique route, marinating in a more seasonal publishing schedule that leads to highly curated issues put together with love and care. To put out a print issue of anything these days, the content needs to justify the expense and time it takes to put together. Limited edition releases like AriZona Iced Tea’s Great Buy Magazine, or Frank Ocean’s Boy’s Don’t Cry, allow the editors and artists involved to craft issues full of interesting art — rather than full of editorials and ad-space.
Modeling agency turned creative crew, Cayenne is the latest to throw their hat in the print game with a 240-page bi-annual book of the same name, with the next edition sent to launch sometime in April of next year.
“This was the start of the first biannual print edition,” says Cayenne Editor-in-Cheif and photographer Ashley Wilhardt. “It was a way to take everyone who takes part in what we do and put them into something tangible. Something bigger than us. It was spending money we didn’t have, doing something we had no idea how to do, going out on a limb, taking a chance,”
Ahead of the release of the first issue of Cayenne, the crew held a big party that brought together a new era of Hollywood creatives to celebrate the agency’s first step into the world of tangible media. We have a few pictures from the party as well as some selects from the book. With 240 pages of art, this is just a small taste of what the crew created in book form.
