Scandinavian Eclectic

Magazines We Love: Part 4

Jan Walaker, founder and editor of Hotrod magazine, certainly made life difficult for himself when he named his magazine. Try Googling his magazine and you’ll end up with pages and pages of results about hot rods, street rods and muscle cars. Take a look at the magazine and you won’t find a car in sight.

The name is not the only interesting peculiarity of this Norwegian based English language magazine. Every issue is a completely different concept from any that have gone before. It’s always a pleasant surprise when picking up a new issue to discover radically different content, lay out styles and even different paper stock (paper grade is selected to suit the images in each issue). Jan even likes to play with the masthead. The latest issue has the masthead in reverse and the one before had an almost invisible varnished title. Whilst Jan is always the editor and Bjorn Kusoffsky is always the joint art director, each issue is produced in collaboration with guest contributors. All of which makes for an intriguing read and ensures that Hotrod remains one of our favorite magazines.

Given all of the above, it’s difficult to know how to describe Hotrod or to explain what type of magazine it is. Issue #28 was dedicated to Japan and based around a touring exhibition of Japanese artifacts and art, curated by Jan. Issue #29 was full of fantastic photography and artwork by Charlie White, Tova Mozard, Tom Sachs and Paul McCarthy, to name but a few. Issue #30 was basically a showcase of comtemporary Swedish photography at its best.

The current issue (#31) has been co-edited by Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) in collaboration with the video artist, Charles Atlas. Most remarkably it includes an exclusive 7” picture disk of music by Antony and the Johnsons. We’d heard a rumor that, due to the disk, copies of the latest issue of the magazine were being traded on eBay and when we checked online earlier today, we discovered it was true.

I’m still not sure we’ve adequately explained Hotrod magazine. Perhaps the difficulty to describe it partly explains its appeal. Track down a copy and judge for yourself.

Comments

[Fenke]

well, you are absolutely right about the name - i googled it, and only via the picture search i found this entry. but where is the direct link to a website? (is there a website?) i found one link, but it lead nowwhere:-(
http://www.manualdesign.no/hotrod/