As a part of the State of Design Festival, Design:Made:Trade will be taking place in the opulent surrounds of the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne over the weekend.

Part trade show, part seminar and exhibition it’s a really comprehensive round-up of some of the best design happenings right now. There are over sixty 3×3 meter cardboard booths (and a veritable jungle of other paper-based displays… we’re still wondering how we can convince them to let us take one of their gigantic cardboard geodesic domes back to the store once they’re finished!) containing all kinds of great design bits and pieces from furniture to fashion to lighting and beyond.

And if you need to take a break and check out some mags or browse through a selection of design and architecture books while you’re there… well, we’ll be there as well. Happy days!

Magazines are like friends.

They have certain characteristics that make us love them, quirks that we accept, and traits that are uniquely theirs.

Ignoring the fact that the personification of some mags are either male or female, we have a question for you. Two questions in fact, although you only have to answer one to be in the running to win a $50 mag nation voucher.

Answer either of the questions below via commenting on our blog, or via Twitter or Facebook, and the response we like best will win the $50 voucher.

1. If you could have a long term relationship with a magazine, which would you choose and why?

2. If you could have a hot, steamy one night stand with a magazine, which would you choose and why?

Good luck, and let the mag lovin’ begin!

What I would like to know “Mag-Nation” is how a NZ company (which all the profits go back overseas) can claim $30k in government grants for a website from Melbourne city council, (funded by the tax payer) to run a glorified newsagency under the label that its an innovative business?

With content in your “about us” section like – “All the girls who work at mag nation are gorgeous. All the boys have big schlongs.” I’m shocked that the Melbourne City Council thinks its a good idea to fund such blatantly sexist, boorish content.

Not only that, this “Undies Monday” is STOLEN from Gaslight Music who used to have a once a year nude event to raise money for public radio!

So in short – $30,000 of taxpayer funds for a disgusting sexist website, and stolen ideas from other companies.

“Mag-Nation” does not constitute an “innovative” business. More like an innovative way of ripping off other peoples idea’s and wrapping them up in SMUT to make corporate profits that get sent overseas.

WASTE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS!!!!

Signed:
Angry City Of Melbourne Taxpayer.
(who doubts this message will even be posted in its entirety)

A few thoughts in response Mr/Mrs Taxpayer.

1. It was 15K, not 30K

2. We “started” in NZ, but we are an Australian registered company. The NZ company is a subsidiary of our Australian Parent company. All profits (or losses) stay in the Aus entity.

3. We never claimed Undies Monday was original. We in fact openly admit the inspiration came from Gaslight. See this link and the comments.

4. The Australian Retail Association also awarded us “most innovative retailer” in 2007

5. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. We respect yours, and your right to not shop or engage with us. The City of Melbourne obviously had their own opinion as well.

6. We did post this in its entirety.

Regular readers of this blog might remember the a competition asking you to write a poem about, well, us. The prize for the best poem on the topic of mag nation, you might recall, would win FREE COFFEE FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

Now there were some great entries (we’re looking at you, David Weiss, you haiku ninja!), but as soon as we saw this entry we knew it was gonna take the cake.

Growing up as a tween midway on the Belgrave/Lilydale train line,
I had a Tamagotchi and Furby – my life was pleasantly benign.

Mag Nation – what you mean to me is difficult to describe,
But one thing is for sure – to you I will never unsubscribe.

Emily Naismith, you are hereby certified mag nation poet laureate for perpetuity!

(Oh, and if you’re wondering what the photo is; Emily came in to claim coffee number one of 365 today and since we hadn’t managed to make a gold medallion or giant quill pen trophy to present her with like we’d planned, well, we just rigged a super deluxe version of our Coffee Loyalty Cards with a bit of silver pen. Yeah, we’re good like that…. call us the MacGyvers of the mag game.)

How many of you knew that the cult mag Dumbo Feather, Pass it On was created by a Kiwi?

Well it was, and Kate Bezar, the founder of Dumbo Feather (and one of our really good friends!) has just moved back to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

If you’re not familiar with the mag… well, it’s hard to do it justice in a few short words. But in essence… every quarter it dishes up long-format interviews with five of the most interesting people that you’ve never heard of…

From the American ex-pat in Paris who’s cooked dinner for 60 strangers at his home every Sunday for the past 30 years to a jewellery designer who works with roadkill, to the founder of Wikipedia (yeah, okay, you might have heard of him…)

Kate will be in our Ponsonby store (123 Ponsonby Rd) this coming Saturday (the 8th of May) between 11am – 1pm to sign copies of Dumbo Feather, have a chat, and generally hang out with our Ponsonby customers.

Hope many of you can come along; I can’t think of a better Mother’s day gift than a signed current issue and some back issues of this gorgeous Mook.

Violets are Blue

Magazines are lovely

And mag nation is too…

Ok – that was utter crap. I am obviously not a poet and I do know it. How about a second attempt?

There was a young store called mag nation

Who was searching for mag retailing inspiration

In the absence of any

Down dropped the proverbial penny

Which led to magazine mecca creation

Still no good huh? Any chance you could help me improve on a poem about mag nation?

How about this for a good deal? Write a poem about mag nation and post it on our Facebook page. It could be a rhyming poem, or it could be a real adult one (no – that doesn’t mean rude content – it just means grown up intellectual poetry), although rhyming is probably easier.

Anyway, submit it on our Facebook page and we will choose the one that we like best to win a prize. And that prize will be FREE COFFEE from either our Elizabeth St, Greville St or King St stores FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

See below for the terms and conditions and start poeming!

• We are the kings of this promotion and reserve the right to do anything, change anything or kill it completely if it takes our fancy
• Free coffee for a year means a maximum of one free coffee (regular size) per day (which is valued at precisely $1387)
• You have to submit your poem onto our facebook page prior to midnight on the 30th of April
• Mag Nation will judge the poem they like the best, based on who contacts them offline and offers the best back massage. Ok, maybe not, but this is a completely subjective pursuit and we will be the sole judges.
• No mag nation employee can submit a poem – that means you Simon.
• This particular offer is relevant to our Australian stores. We will think of something else for you New Zealanders, but we don’t serve coffee in Ponsonby or Queen St because Auckland rentals are too damn high to allow us more space.
• The free coffee will start as of the first of May (it might be a tad later in Sydney depending on whether Jared gets our coffee machine in on time) – Sydney customers feel free to email us with encouraging “hurry up Jared” messages that we can forward to our shopfitter.
• Any individual may enter as many poems as they like. Get creative. We like creative.
• By submitting your poem on our facebook page, you give us permission to use it. It becomes ours. All ours. If we want to print it on tea towels or use it as lyrics for our next chart topping single produced by the resurrected trio of Stock, Aitkin and Waterman, then we can.

Let’s never speak of this again…

Our big learning from Undies Monday is that the taboo of wearing underwear in public (as long as it is kept within a controlled environment) really appeals to a lot of people. Having spoken to a prominent US based marketing expert yesterday, we realised that the thrill of taking one’s clothes off coupled with a reward directly linked to the risk factor is what created such good will amongst the various participants.

We want to be able to replicate this psychological link, but vary the promotion sufficiently to keep it fresh and interesting.

Therefore, after much thought and deliberation, we would like to introduce you to our newest promotion…

BOOBY TUESDAY!

Now before you write in to complain, we are going to put very strict terms and conditions on this. Please click here to read the Terms & Conditions for Undies Monday. We are going to use this as our base, and in the next 24 hours we’ll submit a new set of Ts & Cs to make sure this doesn’t get out of hand.

So, what is involved? This one is very easy to understand. Come on in to any mag nation exposing your chest region (male or female!) and you will win, wait for it…

Oh shit. What’s the date today?

Damn!

We love design conference season. Kicking back, watching some of the most interesting and inspiring design figures out there talking all about their work and their inspirations and whatever else floats their boat… and leaving the place full of ideas and ready to take on the world. What could be better?

One of our regular favourites, agIdeas kicks off at the Arts Centre in Melbourne on the 26th of April and features a huge range of fascinating speakers from across the design spectrum.

They’ve got some real corkers this year, like Theo Jansen (the guy who builds those creepily lifelike wind powered kinetic sculptures), chef Jacques Reymond, Eamo, We Buy Your Kids (who you might know from their amazing poster designs and album artwork), Dan Formosa (he pretty much designed the original personal computer) and plenty more.

This really is an exceptional event and tickets are selling fast, so make sure to get in quick!