When I saw the new campaign on Previdar “Long Live The Free” – it took me back to the article that I write the other week “Every Generation Needs A Revolution“. With every generation really it’s always about the same thing – to be heard. 1976 and 2015 students protest the education system because they feel that they are not heard or understood. All this took me back to 10 years ago when I started my first online platform.
I remember starting my first magazine in 2006 I had no idea what I was doing, it was called Culture Shock. I just needed my voice, I needed to be heard because the current voice was not reflective of my reality. What I saw on the magazine stands at CNA didn’t reflect my reality. The magazine failed before even anyone could get hold of it (maybe it was a blessing is disguise). Took a break and started another magazine called studio83 the same year. Honestly I was in the wrong industry but I had the right passion. I started the magazine and I distributed the magazine via email from work. I later met Lebogang Nkoane and we teamed up to do the magazine together. We didn’t do the magazine for the fame, we did it for freedom, we did it for our voices, our realities, our ideas and our dreams.
During this time magazines world wide were doing well, I remember Truelove’s circulation was around 200k – 300k reader per month. Data was very expensive, not what we are paying today, I am talking about R2500 for 5 GB expensive. The conversation between Lebogang and I were always “ what is going to happen when black people finally can afford to get online”. We need to build platforms for them now – that was always the plan. The essence of all that gave birth to birth of Studio83 (www.studio83.co.za), 75 (www.75.co.za), Half (www.half.co.za), MassAppeal (www.massappeal.co.za ), Celebrate Life ( www.cl.studio83.co.za ) and AwayToBe (awayto.be)
All these ideas were ground breaking for their time, few people were online at the time (let alone owning platforms), no one was doing what we were doing at the time. The ideas, the freedom, the inspiration and fans from all over the world was just something else. I will list some of the platforms that we created and explain what the focus was about. *(Some of the platforms we have had we decided to shut them down because they needed a lot of attention)
Studio83 (Popular Culture Magazine, started in 2006)
I am a CREATIVE LIFESTYLE magazine. I do what I want to do, talk the way I want to talk and talk to MY people directly. I talk to them about things that affect and interest them. I explore South Africa’s ‘popular’ culture through the eyes of all those who are creative in their own rights and I tell my findings to you. When I say ‘creative’, I mean anybody who does anything fresh from music, design, dance, illustrating, architecture, writing to investment banking. YES, I also consider these cats creative, cause you have to have a creative brain for numbers in order to do what you do – MAD RESPECT!
75 (Think Instagram online, was created in 2007)
This is a daily —collaborative— photographic project. It is an idea derived from Sinah Ntholi Nkoane; a photography journal I have been running for 9 years or so.
During that time I realised I would like to see more day to day photography from other people, so I decided to build this. Within that I’ll invite a couple of people to the project to do just that and in turn I get to see beautiful photography, well, we get to. In the end, they too, these initial ‘graphers (also known as my rock-stars) will invite whomever they want and the circle grows as time moves.
But, it is only one photograph a day, every other day. Why one? Well, my thinking is that, this induces a sense and appreciation of photography.
Propaganda & Misinformation Bureau. est. 2005 The on aesthetics and originality— ideas, including:
interactive media, graphic design, illustration, motion graphics, information graphics, user interface design, user experience, information architectured art, film, etc.
Curated. Sharing and engaging what we know of, that inspires us, that inspires our creative existence — if you have questions or you would like your work to be featured do hesitate, firstly,
then make contact.
— YY
an Alter Native
So for the 8th issue of Studio83 we decided to take a road trip to Coffee Bay in the Eastern Cape with friends from different background. The idea was that the entire issue would come out of that road trip. Before trending on twitter was popular, before twitter was populated, well we created a hashtag for this trip. (I don’t remember the hashtag though). So the trip was documented on twitter and everything was uploaded on MassAppeal. There website would pull up the images and location that were uploaded on twitter onto the website. The entire conversation online would be recorded on to this website – pictures, notes and tweets. The end product was the Redirection Issue – Change is Inevitable
This magazine was dedicated to Lelethu Lumkwana who was the editor of Truelove Babe because she passed on in 2008 in an accident. Original name of the magazine was Celebrate Lelethu but we had to find a better name because we hoped that the magazine lived longer than two issues. The core of this magazine was to celebrate life, love and longevity but more focused on women. Studio83 had more male influence because it was Lebogang and myself, so it made sense for CL to have more female influence. First Cover had Lelethu on and I remember that Romz Deluxe designed the cover because I struggled with the cover for obvious reasons. Second cover was Precious Kofi, I remember this shoot was very cool and so fresh at the time. Within that period of time I’ve grown close to Precious and she came along with to Coffee Bay, she was like a little sister to me.
Awayto.Be (a way to be anywhere, using public transport)
This website helps you get to a place in public transport, that’s including taxis, buses, gautrain and any form of public transport in South Africa. Awayto.Be covers routes in Gauteng, Western Cape and Kenya.
We have done so much in the last couple of years and the journey still continues with Marvin …