Editor Zan Boag Publisher The Bull Publishing Country Australia | Frequency Quarterly Year founded 2013 | |
Categories Philosophy, Society, Culture, Art, Literature | ||
New Philosopher is an ad-free newsstand philosophy magazine distributed throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and produced by the team behind the magazine Womankind.
Contents
History and profile
New Philosopher launched in Australia in 2013 at the Byron Bay Writers Festival, where it was the bestselling item at the festival and number 6 at the festival the following year. According to the University of Sydney, it launched with distribution "across 2,000 news agencies in Australia and New Zealand and circulation in book shops, airports, cafes, delis, art galleries, boutiques and museums." According to posts on Facebook, as of 2015 New Philosopher was the most widely distributed philosophy magazine in the world, with more than 10,000 stockists globally. Each edition is set around a philosophical theme and features an interview with a leading intellectual - previous subjects have included Noam Chomsky, Daniel Dennett, Thomas Piketty, Jane Goodall, John Searle, Peter Singer, Anita L. Allen, Leo Braudy, Luciano Floridi, David Wood, and David Chalmers.
Contributors
The magazine includes writing from prominent intellectuals such as philosophers Peter Singer, Clive Hamilton, Angie Hobbs, Robert W. McChesney, and Howard Gardner, Booker Prize winners DBC Pierre and Peter Carey, award-winning British novelist and essayist Will Self., Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, and three of the winners of the Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Prize in the past four years, philosophers Damon Young, Patrick Stokes, and Paul Biegler. The magazine's literary editor Antonia Case, who is also the editor of Womankind, won the Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Professionals' Award in 2014.
Design awards and recognition
Described by the editor Zan Boag in an interview with MagCulture as being a magazine "as much about art and design as it is about philosophy", the magazine has received attention from the design world. The cover of the "happiness" edition was voted one of the coolest covers of February 2014 by Complex, design website Abuzeedo commented that "the design is super cool and out of the box" and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) featured the magazine, referring to it as a "very popular... ad-free publication that has become a favorite amongst readers in its home country...", a publication that takes "an approachable yet still thoughtful and intelligent tone". The director of magazine website Magpile says "the design is calm, intelligent and very neat" and "if I needed to use just one word to sum up new Aussie magazine, New Philosopher, it would be 'smart'.” It was named one of top magazines launched for 2014 (in the US) by the Library Journal and New York Post listed it as one of six "magazines that will get you thinking", writing that it "feels like a coffee table book with beautiful pictures and large, double-spaced font".