There´s still a month left with my internship at SZ-Magazin but two of my fellow interns finished their´s last week. As a 'thank you' to the team we produced a special edition of the "Sagen Sie Jetzt Nichts" interview without words, a very popular award-winning column in our magazine. Obviously it won't make a lot of sense for you if you don't speak German or are familiar with our inside jokes. I thought I'd post it anyway because we found it funny.
Today is the last day of Oktoberfest, the most famous beer festival in the world. Before I came to Munich, I was looking forward to experiencing this curious event that is somewhat like a carnival where everybody wears the same costumes. Unfortunately it turned out that nobody wanted to go with me because a few weeks ago Al-Qaeda had the funny idea to spoil everybody´s fun by claiming that Afghanistan is no Octoberfest – which is true – but it caused both, Bavarians as well as bearded foreigners to have a hard time enjoying the beer fest. 700 policemen turned the place into a fortress and everybody who had a "funny feeling" changed their plans and let me alone with my determined plans to enjoy a Maß or two in one of the beer tents. Ironically more people died of alcohol-related incidents than suicide bombers. Funny isn't it?
As you would expect in Germany, even the weather is on time and gave us a wet start of autumn last week with the first rain on my way to and from work. You could say it´s almost English conditions with the exception that there´s less wind and Munich is flatter which makes it easier to cycle with an umbrella. The view from my office on the 9th floor is getting better too. I'm almost tempted to spend the entire day staring out of the window and watching how the clouds wrap around the mountains. And if you're now wondering if there isn't anything more exciting happening, don't worry: the beer tastes good, Munich is getting smaller, I now have flatmates and many exciting magazines are under way.
If you live in London, you might be able to grab a copy of the Süddeutsche Zeitung today and have a look at the new issue of the SZ-Magazin supplement. The new design becomes really obvious now, it´s very different and looks a lot younger than before. Also the content feels different after the redesign. The magazine features the iPhone paintings of UK artist David Hockney in original size.It´s also the first issue that I was involved in during my editorial design internship in Munich. Some bits and bops that I made during my first few days include the photo montage at the cross-word page and the little illustrations decorating the story on page 20 and 22. I also spent a lot of time with the images of the Cold Water Canyan Park. It sounds little but it´s actually more than I expected I would be allowed to do in the first week. It´s great, they expect 100% from you from day 1. Nobody tells you what you have to do, you're just expected to come up with your own ideas and suggest solutions to sometimes such tricky questions like "how can we illustrate a competition where readers can win brainy audio books" and then you go and put some headphones on a philosopher´s head and they love it. The most amazing thing however is to see how such a publication gets put together by so many people. It´s surprising, it´s new, it´s different from anything you learn at uni. And it´s getting better every day.And in case you're wondering: yes, the image at the top is a 3D boxshot. Just like the image of the book that I made for page 33.
Last Thursday the SZ-Magazin had a relaunch. It´s the first issue in a new, younger design and also the first one I was involved in as an intern. Although there´s not really anything that I did myself in this issue, it´s still interesting to be able to have a look behind the scenes of such a redesign. However, a little piece of work that I did was published not in the magazine but surprisingly enough in the actual newspaper. It´s a photo montage of Bob Dylan with a santa hat that I made the other day for our music blog. Would be nicer if they had given me some credit though. Anyway, I'm still enjoying being here, I got to grips with the workflow and can now start coming out of my shell and getting more creative.
Some things have changed here. Instead of Quöllfrisch, there´s now Hofbräu, instead of grotesque there´s now blackletter, instead of ´ss' I now use 'ß' when I write in German. That´s all signs of my move from Switzerland to Bavaria. Not only do I write the sz ('eszet') ligature again, I can also eat the lovely 'Eszet Schnitten' on my breakfast roll and even more: I now work at the SZ, the 'Süddeutsche Zeitung' (literally South German newpaper), Germany´s largest daily broadsheet or rather at the Friday supplement, the SZ Magazin, a full colour lifestyle magazine with more than 800 000 readers every week that has won numerous awards of the Art Directors Club over the years.BlogThis!Share to FacebookShare to Pinterest
Some guessed it right, when I asked what city I went to for my interview. It´s a city where most words end with -erl instead of -li and where you hear "Grüß Gott" instead of "Grüezi" and "Vielen Dank, auf Wiederschauen" instead of "Merci vilmol, uf Wiederluege". It´s a place famous for beer and sausages not of cheese and chocolate and shop signs are in blackletter instead of Helvetica. It´s Munich, the bavarian capital, famous for lederhosen and pretzels and whatnot.Here I found a lovely flat just by the English Garden, where I'm still unpacking my four bags with probably around 100kg of stuff. I have updated my contact details, so if you want to come and visit or send me a postcard, feel free; the address is here.
