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Works in Progress, which I am the editor-in-chief of, is now available as a print magazine. I think it's the most beautiful and readable magazine I've ever seen. You can subscribe for $100/£75 to receive six beautiful, 120-page issues a year – the first issue will arrive in November.
We've worked incredibly hard to make it a brilliant reading experience and something that is beautiful enough that you will want to show it off in your home. We are also shifting to a more frequent, bimonthly release cadence, and aim to increase that over time to eventually become a monthly magazine. We want to, some day, be just as significant, widely-read and influential as magazines like The Atlantic or The Economist.
I took a bit of convincing to do this. I think most magazines are either utilitarian and easy to read, or well-designed and beautiful. I didn't want to try making a sort of Vogue knock-off, but nor did I want something that was bare bones and purely functional.
One of the things that I think really sets us apart is that we really, really, really care about design and beauty, in both the things we make ourselves and the world we want to help to create. But what we have made is, as you will see, the best of both worlds. I cannot help but smile when I look at our text, which is in the most pleasing typeface I've ever seen.
Our margins are decorated with illustrations inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts, and the whole magazine is filled with clever little design Easter Eggs that will please readers as they spot them. Some of these are so clever I have had to convince our designers to explicitly explain them, because I don’t want readers to miss them: we have an article on the battle of the Japanese and Swiss watch industries that uses a hue of red that mixes the different shades of red from the Japanese and Swiss flags. How cool is that?
Our pieces are long and detailed, so it's essential that reading them includes places to take a breather by admiring some beautiful artwork or marginalia. And our datavis is a perfect balance of clear and attractive. I think moving to print has a lot of advantages for us.
Most importantly, it allows our readers to read Works in Progress the way a lot of them have always wanted to. I consume nearly everything through my phone, including long books, but I am weird. I've lost count of the number of people who've asked me for a print version they can subscribe to.
I think unbelievably highly of our readers. I have met many of them, and they are some of the most interesting and thoughtful people I get to meet. They span almost the entire breadth of the political spectrum, and in reading Works in Progress they are, I think, embracing the same intellectual eclecticism and pragmatism that animates all of us writing and editing it.
Being able to build a stronger following among them is very appealing to me, and I am looking forward to the subscriber-only events we'll be holding for them too. One of the main things we asked ourselves throughout the design process of the new magazine was, "Is this good enough for a Works in Progress reader?"
Going to print also elevates the stuff we write. There is a natural prestige to a print magazine that online publishing simply doesn't have. I think our ideas and articles are good and important, and anything that elevates them in people's minds so that they're taken as seriously as possible will help in our goal of actually changing the world with the ideas we believe in.
Relatedly, I think this will make some writers a bit more inclined to want to write for us. If you have your own Substack, especially one with paying subscribers, it's natural to ask why you'd want to write for other publications instead of just publishing directly to your own followers. Our reach certainly helps with that, but I think being able to appear in a print magazine read by, I hope, tens of thousands of people will be an attractive prospect.
There will be some print-only content: columns (the great Virginia Postrel is writing a regular one, as am I), letters, artwork and special features. But we will still publish the bulk of our work online, and we will not be paywalling that.
Our goal is still to discover, develop and popularise the most worthwhile ideas we can find for improving the world, and that means making our online edition as broadly available as possible. If that’s how you want to keep reading our work, nothing will change. But if you want to see the print edition for yourself and come along as we try to grow into one of the world’s most interesting, beautiful, and important magazines, we're excited for you to join us.
