Going to Paris with Rachael Taylor in February was always going to be a good idea. Getting industry insight from the Indigo and Premier Vision trade shows, striking a deal with Stylesight to give our students access to some of the best trend advice in the world, taking hundreds of photos for the blog, ‘comp shopping’ in Paris’s chic stationery shops, brainstorming over café au lait in the day, and vin rouge in the evening… But in hindsight one of the best things that actually came out of that trip was a brainwave we had sat on the plane as it took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport.
We decided to create the world’s first online magazine dedicated to surface pattern design, to make it beautiful, informative and inspiring, and to give it away for free.
Fast forward six months to last Thursday and MOYO magazine was born to rave reviews (thank you everyone!) Seven days later and it has been read by over 25,000 people all over the world (and the numbers are still climbing).
Rachael Taylor and I are on a mission to open up the wonderful world of surface pattern design to a wider audience, train and inspire a new generation of designers and bring more colour into everyday life. Thank you to everyone who has helped spread the word about MOYO and helped us get that little bit closer.
MOYO is a prime example of the democratisation and globalisation of publishing. It was conceived in France, edited in the UK, project managed from Spain, designed in the USA and features contributions from as far afield as Italy and New Zealand, Holland and Australia. We published it ourselves via the brilliant free publishing site Issuu.com and have been able to make it available to anyone, anywhere in the world, without the environmental impact of printing huge numbers of copies. This is what publishing our way looks like!
If you haven’t seen it yet, get your free copy of MOYO here!