Three weeks ago, Borders had a closing down sale at their Oxford Street branch in London. Of course being a literary addict, I had to check it out for myself. Absolute chaos ensued; you will find cookery books amongst other titles such as an autobiography on Winston Churchill, to Windows XP for Dummies. The experience I had when reading Filament was very similar to the above, with some rather “interesting” off the cuff articles.
As you look at the cover, there is a spiritual feel to it. A man is kneeling down as if praying; even the typeface used for the heading has a religious feel. However, any potential enlightenment ends here. As I flicked through and read each of the articles, it became apparent to me that it was trying to cover too broad of a spectrum to attract its audience. But who exactly is the audience? Well according to their website, it’s about “intelligent thought and beautiful men”. The topics covered are too eclectic, from witchcraft or agony aunt columns on sexual encounters, to a guide about pubic hair. This brings me to another issue I see; the more you read, the more sexual undertones there are to the point where an innocent recipe for Spiced Celeriac Bake turns into “food pornography”, with a male model posing rather suggestively with the bulbous vegetable. Every five pages or so, there will be pictures of models in different poses and background effects. To me, it seemed somewhat out of place. Is this a modelling magazine, a scientific magazine, or a source for sex advice?
There are some geeky elements to it, so maybe this will be of more interest. A two page spread called “Girl geeking” contains interviews from two girl geeks. It was interesting to see how geeky interests develop at a young age. But I was hoping for a more in-depth interview, such as offering advice to women that want to break into I.T, or slightly more technical elements which describes their job in more detail. Nevertheless, I did like the section describing obstacles encountered whilst working in a male-dominated industry.
From reading through, I feel this magazine is more for a niche market than for the average girl geek. I’m not even sure if this magazine is pitched at women in general, as it does not fit 100% into the Cosmopolitan type category either. W H Smith would find it difficult to place. However, I would like to offer some constructive suggestions. Firstly, Filament can benefit from a professional editor. The language used can be somewhat vulgar and too colloquial for a magazine, and a third-party editor can advise on what content is suitable. Some wording may be acceptable in a blog but may not necessarily translate well on paper. Secondly, the magazine can benefit from more focus and direction; there are too many jack-of-all-trades elements. There’s a wide variety of content that can be expanded upon to replace the other seemingly random articles.
I will say however, being a first edition there will be a lot of trial and error; as a first stab, the presentation is quite good. It can only go up from here.
-Motoko
So that’s what you were up to while I was saving pennies reading twitter and admiring the real life (the one reading the chess book) in the cafe
I received my copy of Filament today and I have to say it was a breath of fresh air – I actually found the “eclectic” mixture of articles interesting, covering topics I might not have thought about otherwise (it has encouraged me to finally try and master my guitar, for instance, and neither hell nor high water would have coaxed me near that infernal thing otherwise). Furthermore I found the “[overly] colloquial” language to be pleasantly cheeky without being vulgar: it has a sense of fun to it. I can certainly see where you’re coming from, but I think the girls have done a great job, and I shall certainly be buying issue 2. All the best, Hx
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A collection of random articles is absolutely what Filament is meant to be, giving readers surprises and ecclecticism instead of spoon-feeding them the usual predictable staples of women’s, science, tech or erotic magazines. We feel embraced by the girl geek community as a whole going by the feedback we’ve received, and hope this review will lead more of y’all checking our Filament. Best wishes!