While I glean a variety of magazines, the only one I subscribe to is Seed. The design is beautiful and the writing is excellent, but mostly I subscribe because it feels like comfort food as it reminds me of my old love, Omni magazine (though Seed has less of a SciFi bent).

Posted by Colin on 11 January 2008 @ 3pm

I read a lot of magazines. We read and subscribe to The New Yorker, Inc.com, and Bon Appetit. In addition to those, we read (and buy on occasion) HOW Magazine, Delicious magazine, Gourmet, and Digital Camera Magazine.

Yep, I’m a certified magazine Ho.

Posted by Joy on 11 January 2008 @ 4pm

Around here were enjoy The Walrus. It is thoughtful, political, covers interesting social issues, and is Canadian but relevant internationally. Good writing and some good images/photography too.

Posted by Gayla on 11 January 2008 @ 5pm

I just subscribed to both Wallpaper* and Monocle. I subbed to Wallpaper on the basis it was good when I read it frequently a year or two ago.. but man, I am so disappointed with my first issue. And.. after reading the recent post here about Monocle, I am not too encouraged about that either! Sorry that doesn’t help you in finding new magazines, but that’s the reality of it for me.

Posted by Peter Cooper on 11 January 2008 @ 7pm

I’m enjoying architectural publication Mark Magazine (http://www.mark-magazine.com/) from the same people as the interior design magazine Frame.

In London I would pick up Icon, and grafik too, but I never see them in the US.

Posted by Tom Carden on 11 January 2008 @ 10pm

I’ll give a hearty recommendation of Edge, a British video game magazine that has an equal amount of beautiful graphics and hearty content. In a field of fluff, Edge stands out as something special in video game publications (even if their website doesn’t).

Posted by Matt Jacobs on 11 January 2008 @ 10pm

Cabinet
The mix of arts_culture essays and imagery makes for an interesting read, plus it only comes out four times per year so I can take my time and actually read the mag.

The Atlantic Monthly
The letters to the editor are so damned good that I’m compelled to read the previous months’ articles that I glossed over. I’m a holdover who remains indebted to the editors for integrating poetry in the layout of their articles.

Metropolis
They cover design and architecture that isn’t pretentious, or misleading like Dwell. The writing’s smart, sophisticated, and they’ve introduced me to some great architectural trends such as building mosques in the 21st century.

Wired
OK, my wife’s a scientist and I work in radio, but the copy is so pithy and fun that we find ourselves laughing out loud to each other and repeating quirky phrases.

Monocle
I’ll admit it — I don’t subscribe and I don’t purchase single issues b/c the magazine is a budget-buster for a dude with a two-year-old and a newborn. Between friends and libraries, I’m covered. Their site is fantastic, especially some of their video reports that introduce me to Scandinavian cafe cuisine and Sprinkles cupcakes. Dan Hill of City of Sound heads the endeavor.

The New York Times Magazine
Does this count? Well, this pseudo-mag allows me to be involved in many a conversation and sound like I read the NYT regularly (which I try to do online): “Did you see that piece in the Times on Sunday?”

ESOPUS
This journal is so well thought out and constructed that the pleasure of perusing is elevated to an art form. And some of the music they provide breaks me out of my boring Bjork and Calexico slump.

Guilt & Pleasure
I get to read this at work regularly. It’s a bit irreverent but true to its mission of opening up difficult conversations about religion and contemporary issues, particularly as they’re seen in the Jewish community.

Others: This Old House, National Geographic, Aperture, FRAME, Harper’s, SEED, Scientific American

Posted by Trent Gilliss on 12 January 2008 @ 1am

I’m new to your site but I have about 30 magazine subscriptions. Ones that I’ve been enjoying lately are:

Sky & Telescope. Sadly reduced in size and paper quality recently, the photos are still amazing and the articles are technical but readable. The sky chart at the center is worth the price of the magazine.

Art of Eating. A beautiful ad free magazine, Behr covers food regions like no one else with 20 pages of descriptions of the region, its food and its wine

Oxford American. Always focused on the Amercian South, they do a great job of making me miss me home. Their music issues have also introduced me to many great then unknown bands.

Others that I’ve been enjoying of late that are better known are the NYer, the Atlantic, the Believer and Virgina Quarterly Review.

Posted by CarterB on 12 January 2008 @ 5am

Oh, I forgot a few others I’ve been enjoying lately. The new Good magazine has great graphics and occasionally the articles have been amazing (often they are too short.

National Geographic Traveller has the best photography and they focus on areas that I want to visit with my lifestyle in mind–curious about the world with a moderate travel budget.

Finally, we just subscribed to Everywhere magazine based on their initial issue. It was extremely diverse in its travel news and has great potential.

Posted by CarterB on 12 January 2008 @ 6am

This might be almost cliché, but I find myself reading Vanity Fair from cover to cover each month. Some of the best feature writing in the business IMHO.

I also enjoy Make a great deal. Still enjoying JPG (sorry Derek). It is easy to enjoy Wired if you just treat the first two thirds of the magazine as a store catalog for geeks.

Posted by Patrick Rhone on 12 January 2008 @ 7am

I just renewed my subscription to Nude Magazine (http://www.nudemagazine.co.uk/) – an indie lowbrow culture British based magazine, crammed full of things like… artists, punk music, graffiti, alt. cinema. You can get a 5 issue subscription for £16 if you live in the UK, and I think international subs are a little bit extra.

All the others I’m reading while I’m in the US are easily bought off the shelf: Nylon magazine, Juxtapose, iD and Newsweek. Still looking for the right photography magazine.

Posted by Natali on 12 January 2008 @ 7pm

Wired. It’s one of the most beautiful magazines in print – the layout, design and typography are simply amazing.

I am especially a sucker for their information graphics that illustrate the articles. The graphics deliver complex information in such a way that that my mind can lift it off the page and start drawing conclusions. That is a gift.

Posted by Elliott Pesut on 13 January 2008 @ 9am

Oxford American because I am from the south.

Posted by Tim on 13 January 2008 @ 2pm

Right now i have a soft spot with independent Mexican fashion/art magazines:

Baby Baby Baby http://myspace.com/babybabybabymagazine (sorry they only have myspace) the photographers they publish are quite interesting.

Celeste http://celeste.com.mx/
it is actually the big sister of the former. self service published in their latest issue a conversation with the staff of this magazine. interesting

Posted by bobble-bee on 13 January 2008 @ 10pm

Pretty good stuff over at ANP Quarterly

http://www.rvcaanp.com/

Posted by marco on 14 January 2008 @ 8am

Subscriptions to Harper’s and Four Four Two (soccer) keep me busy, but Geez (http://www.geezmagazine.org) is an interesting newcomer. Sort of an alt-Christian quarterly from the Canadian prairies, the design is zine-ish but the paper and covers are high quality.

I’m a sucker for film mags, and usually read Film Comment. I picked up the latest issue of Stop Smiling (http://www.stopsmilingonline.com/) because it was their film issue and was pretty impressed.

Posted by James on 14 January 2008 @ 8am

Harpers
One of the few I come close to reading cover-to-cover.

Wired
Got the free subscription at NextFest. Pretty to look at and usually one or two enjoyable features. The really essential articles though tend to hit my radar online before the thing arrives in the mailbox.

NYTimes Magazine
Great features bookended by breezy throw-away crap and ugly advertisements for ugly luxury condos. Manhattan real estate ads often indistinguishable from plastic surgeon ads.

Good Magazine
Not bad.

Vanity Fair
Usually some great writing in there. Dripping with slick advertising, guilty pleasures, great photography.

Posted by t o n x on 14 January 2008 @ 10am

Elle Decoration / Living Etc / IdealHome (Uk) Dwell and Blueprint if i can find them.

Im attempting to study in Interior Design so i collect as many mags as i can find, sometimes its a bit hit-and-miss as to which have the best content but ive whittled it down to the best.

I gave up buying so called ‘mens’ magazines, GQ, Esquire, Arena etc etc as they all promised what they just cant deliver. Some nice articles but everything else is lacking.

NME for musical inspiration and bands/gigs to check out.

Plus Wallpaper* is nearly always bought, even if it pretty much just pornography for designers.

Posted by Peiter on 14 January 2008 @ 3pm

I’ll list all my subscriptions in a moment here, but I’m surprised no one has brought up The Week yet. This weekly little gem is a shining example of efficiency and aggregation. The Week skims so I don’t have to do.

Other than that…despite the ad-i-ness of WIRED, I still read it cover to cover (after tearing out the ads, a ritual I always enjoy). The design faltered there for a while but has picked up in the last year.

I think TIME’s redesign has made it way more readable.

I like XLR8R and Signal to Noise for music.

Entertainment Weekly, although I miss that other now defunct mainstream film mag, may it RIP.

Indianapolis Dine is a classy rag for foodies here in the midwest.

PEEL, a sticker rag and another Indianapolis creation, is just really well designed especially when considering its content (there are at least three or four pages of stickers in each issue).

New Yorker for the occasional Malcolm Gladwell piece.

Magazines I did not renew lately for a variety of reasons: US Weekly, Mental Floss, Believer, Atlantic Monthly, Dwell, and a slew of video game magazines.

Posted by John Beeler on 14 January 2008 @ 9pm

I subscribe to too many magazines!

The New Yorker – essential. The best magazine in the world – love its design and blend of the relevent and the quirky. Love a good wallow in really long articles.

The Spectator – best British weekly. Off from its best but still full of idiosyncratic humanity and good coverage of politics and culture.

The Week – excellent middlebrow weekly digest.

Monocle – full of good things, a beautiful object, no celebrities!

Prospect – British monthly ideas mag. Needs a good redesign. Has great potential.

Country Life – always a delight – love fantasizing about buying a country mansion.

Private Eye – essential, packed full of muckracking coverage of the British underbelly.

Vanity Fair – glossy crap – I have given up my subscription after trying it for a year – too many ads.

The Economist – far too dry and full of stupid opinions which are too often wrong. Oxbridge arrogance and idiocy.

Posted by peter hall on 15 January 2008 @ 4am

Independent magazines are the way to go! They have such brave and fearless writing in my opinion.

I live in the UK but I read anything written in English. At the top end is ESSENCE, The Economist, the magazine supplements of the Guardian newspaper, Colures, and Company magazine. The problem I find is finding magazines that relate to me as a black woman, but I mix it up. The Economist is solid, ESSENCE provides me with relevant information on black female issues and newspaper writing is great, so I would say the Guardian.

Posted by aulelia on 15 January 2008 @ 5am

My subscriptions include Mother Earth News, Plenty, Harper’s, Reiki News, and Bust (I read New Yorker, NYTimes Mag, Orion, and others free online). Here are a few other subs I have that I want to highlight:

Radar Magazine – A cheap subscription I ordered on a whim. A breezy bathtime read full of laughs.

Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture – I read this cover to cover each quarter. Terrifically fun dissection of pop culture through a third-wave feminist lens.

The New York Review of Books – Way more engrossing than your average book reviews… this newspapery mag features long articles on a wide array of topics every two weeks. Great brain reading. Sort of like a less glossy and more intellectual New Yorker.

Conscious Choice – A free subscription, this magazine covers spiritual, environmental and progressive political topics each month. Fresh and always interesting. (Look for the free one-year subscription graphic on the right hand side of the homepage.)

Posted by Emily F. on 15 January 2008 @ 11am

Amelia Magazine, a beautiful fashion/design/pop magazine that reflects the love that is put into making it.

Duf, a Dutch mook (magazine/book) for adolescents whose design will make all ages excited.

Posted by W Smith on 15 January 2008 @ 2pm

Spacing is pretty fantastic – urban issues/ideas, pedestrian ramblings, wonderful writing and sassy design.

http://www.spacing.ca

Posted by michele on 15 January 2008 @ 9pm

NEUE PROBLEME is a small magazine based in germany and sweden. i really like it. now they trying radio as well.
well.

http://www.neue-probleme.de

Posted by Peter on 15 January 2008 @ 10pm

THEME MAGAZINE

(content & design must be checked out – every issue has been fresh)

http://www.thememagazine.com

Posted by rich on 17 January 2008 @ 10am

I’m seriously considering a subscription to foreign policy (http://foreignpolicy.com), but i personally think they could use some better cover design.

Posted by Phill MV on 18 January 2008 @ 11am

That said, I’m not a great fan of the bias in some of their articles (which is, well, the whole point of the mag I suppose), but very much unlike the Economist, they publish WHOSE opinion it is.

Posted by Phill MV on 18 January 2008 @ 12pm

Does that count if I don’t read english-speaking magazines? I’d say it doesn’t, but just in case (and hey, this could be the occasion to compare the design and editorial tone around the world, why not).

TELERAMA

Originally it meant Television, Radio, Cinema, and Télérama is the contraction of the three; this magazine is mostly a TV magazine, but a friend of mine used to joke about how one could buy this TV magazine even if one didn’t own a TV. It’s a very good read, intellectual and impertinent. The design is very clever, with a good use of white space and artsy typography.

For instance at the moment, the book review pages are illustrated with polaroids on the theme the book deals with. It’s pretty impressive for a paper mag.

LIRE
(in english: READ).

This magazine chronicles the literary activity in the french-speaking world: book reviews, interviews with authors, A-level-oriented biographies, feature articles.

The design is not so sexy, although they’re using a variety of slab serifs that contrasts with the magazine’s age and their reader’s average age (I suppose).

Posted by Stéphane Deschamps on 23 January 2008 @ 12am

Swindle Magazine

Posted by westondeboer on 24 January 2008 @ 10pm

O.k., also a reader in the U.K., hence the choice of titles:
The New Yorker – for fun;
the Times Higher Education Supplement – a must to keep up to date at work; they recently changed their layout, I guess it’s worth a review
BBC Music Magazine (http://www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/) – unlike most of the bloggers here, I’m into classical music and this is THE magazine despite its constant promotion of BBC3 shows or BBC Orchestra discs/concerts
The Spectator – only started recently with a subscription, too early to say anything. First impression: interesting but I don’t think it competes with the one and only: The New Yorker

Posted by Katja on 30 January 2008 @ 3am

I love CITY Magazine!

Posted by Goods2Give on 1 February 2008 @ 8am

By far my favorite magazine is The Sun.

From their website:
“The Sun is an independent, ad-free monthly magazine that for more than thirty years has used words and photographs to invoke the splendor and heartache of being human… The personal essays, short stories, interviews, poetry, and photographs that appear in its pages explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet those challenges.

The Sun publishes the work of emerging and established artists who are striving to be thoughtful and authentic… Each issue [also] includes a section devoted entirely to writing by readers…

The Sun Publishing Company, Inc. is a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and is supported primarily by subscriptions and reader contributions.”

Posted by LK on 4 February 2008 @ 4am

most of my regular reads are covered in other comments but i’ll add one local favourite mook – Dumbo Feather.

http://dumbofeather.com/

insightful interviews with interesting people.

Posted by amy on 9 February 2008 @ 4am

Wired
I have read and own every single issue since its launch. Cover to cover.

Rolling Stone
I get almost every issue, though this one I tend to skip more easily. Always something interesting to read, but strangely the most interesting articles are not about music. Love the movie critics by Peter Travers.

Rolling Stone Chile
They actually have a Chilean edition (I’m from there). I try to at least get the end-of-year annual with the review of the year’s best albums/artists so I can stay connected with what’s happening down there.

Seed
The beautiful design and photography is what got me interested, and I stayed for the articles.

Dwell
I renovated my loft some time ago, and am still «in the process». This mag gives me great ideas and inspiration. Strangely, most of the featured houses are full of IKEA furniture.

Urbania
Local Montreal urban magazine, which started as a Colors wannabe, but has evolved into something rich, witty and interesting.

Juxtapoz
Keeps me up to date on the (a certain) art scene.

Giant Robot
It’s all about Asia. Asian art & culture is taking over the world and I’m prepared.

I.D.
Not the fashion mag, but the design mag. The art direction is always top notch, the articles are on the light side, but the pictures are great!

Posted by fran6co on 13 February 2008 @ 8pm

I don’t see a mention of Paste anywhere. I also read More and Shape.

Posted by Betti on 19 February 2008 @ 11am

Check out Idealog from New Zealand. It is a business magazine devoted to the creative economy (possibly the only one in the world). The stories are interesting and the design very competent.Idealog website

Disclosure: I co founded the title, though am not involved in its daily operation.

Posted by David MacGregor on 20 February 2008 @ 12pm

Beside local (Italian) news magazines this is what I love:

- Wallpaper
- Monocle
- Financial Times’ How to spend it
- TIME

For the firt two is all about a father-and-son story. They’re complementary and both necessary.
The third one is a fancy “divertissement”
The fourth one doesn’t need any further motivation.

greetings from

http://life-is-a-show.blogspot.com

Posted by Jacopo on 21 February 2008 @ 6am

XLR8R is the only music magazine I read religiously every month, great music coverage and design.

Psychology Today makes the most current psychological research readable and relatable.

Jalouse is like a younger, French version of American Vogue.

Also Shambhala Sun, New Scientist, Dummy, Seed.

Also, even though it’s online Slate Magazine is great. http://www.slate.com

Posted by Erica on 23 February 2008 @ 7pm

the one and only: National Geographic

Posted by daustralala on 1 March 2008 @ 9pm

Do you want to test a bit of Spanish magazine?
Try QUO (www.quo.es) (www.quochina.com) (www.quoweb.com.mx), Hilarious and rigorous popular science from Madrid to Shangai to Mexico DF

Or Muy Intersante (older and serious science in images)

Posted by Getxu on 18 March 2008 @ 12am

I’m from the Philippines and I am also an entertainment magazine editor so I like fluff. I read all the OK! editions (but just flip through the non-English ones), People, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, InStyle and a local fashion rag called Preview.

When I have extra time, I squeeze in Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Elle and Allure. When I have tons of time, then I add Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, T3, Playboy, WIRED, National Geographic and I quite enjoy the magazine of The Peninsula (yes, the hotel).

Posted by Frances Amper Sales on 13 April 2008 @ 11pm

THEME Magazine is THE best magazine out there. They recently won the UTNE Independent Spirit Award for Best Designed Magazine. Word up! Pick one up – they sell out quick at places like B&N, but you can find copies at MacNally Robinson, Reed Space and Zakka.

Posted by Dopio on 14 April 2008 @ 1pm