NAME: Barbara Reyes
FOUNDING PARTNERS:
LATIN NAME: mundus demens

No cover lines, no celebrities, no editorial letter and no ads: Stereotype, a magazine covering fashion, music, art and design, with a circulation of only 1000, is defiantly anti-newsstand. At 6.25 x 8.25 in., the format of this mini-mag is so small it would never have been seen among the other titles on the newsstand. “It’s not meant to sit in Barnes & Noble,” says its founder, Barbara Reyes.

“One thing I know how to do is make a magazine,” she says. And a quick glance at Reyes’s resumé confirms this. She had worked as an art director at Glamour, Martha Stewart Living, W, Manhattan File, ESPN, Cargo and Teen People magazines before accepting her current day job as art director at Domino. Only someone who knows the rules of magazine making well is able to flout them with such flair.

“I hate pretentious magazines that make you feel like you aren’t cool enough,” says Reyes. She likes to present the work and ideas of interesting people “on the brink of success”—content that wouldn’t find a place in other magazines. Because her publication is not time-dependent, she can cover up-and-coming artists and small bands … and not just when they have a new album or movie coming out. The tone of the magazine is approachable: “I don’t preach or make someone feel intimidated,” she says.

Reyes works on Stereotype after hours and finances it herself. She is its editor as well as its art director: She thinks up story ideas, commissions writers and writes headlines. “Normally there’ll be a battle between art and copy,” she says of her experience at other magazines. “Here I can do exactly what I want.” For a piece about the band Metric, for example, Reyes knew she wanted to use “some strong type” to communicate the strength she perceived in the singer Emily Haines’s personality and politically charged world view. She also wanted the photography to be raw, taken during a performance. With this visual image in mind, she wrote the headline —“This is Emily Haines. She does not want your love or pity but she does want you to listen to Metric.”—and set it in bold in-your-face type positioned so that it seems to emerge from Haines’s mouth.

Reyes supposes that most of her readers are predisposed to the visual. But she is gratified that her brother, a doctor, and his Republican friends, who don’t necessarily share her interest in graphic design or her musical taste, also have it on their bedside tables. “It shows I’ve made something that many people can relate to.” Alice Twemlow

(TOP) ABOVE LEFT: Cover of STEREOTYPE Issue #1 featuring art by Neasden Control Centre, A british illustrator with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and style. His collages are a mix of elements from hand-drawn type to transportation receipts. CENTER: A study of abandoned commercial spaces by Ofer Wolberger included in issue #1. RIGHT: A fashion feature from issue #1 in which type was deployed to mirror the physical outline of the model. Reyes found playfulness in the juxtaposition of moody, dark images with lighter graphic elements.