Designs by Neil Feigeles

OFFWORLD MAGAZINE, WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN AND WHAT WAS
So you wanna put out a publication. Not so easy…

In the early 1990's I decided that I wanted to launch my own magazine. That I knew best. Well, maybe I did and maybe I didn't, but I surely had a lot of fun showcasing to the world that there was another way to go then what was out there and that just maybe I was a player in the world of design. At the time I had spent several years working in magazine publishing, I was freelancing at Ziff-Davis publishing, as a traditional board, paste-up and mechanical artist, that had transitioned to a desktop publisher. While still trying to get my foot in the door as a real designer.

I had also just finally got into the world of comics, when a friend from High School, offered me the chance to do my first professional assignment. In the comic book entitled Panorama # 1. Where I wrote and illustrated an 8 page story and the back cover. Once it came out, I began making convention appearances in New York to promote my work in it. At the first convention, I was approached by the people behind Personality Comics, to illustrate the first of over 25 covers.

As this was happening, I was working up ideas to launch my own magazine, and spent many a day contemplating what type of publication it should be. Should it be a comic book, written and drawn by yours truly, or should it be a publication to showcase, my design and art direction abilities. I researched all the genres I was interested in and as is the case with most people, the idea for the magazine just struck me like lightning. As I was standing inside a local comic store, perusing the science fiction periodicals, I found my idea. I had noticed that in the world of science fiction, the magazines were small in number, while the quality of the fiction was great, for the most part the art work was reprinted or repurposed. And my idea smacked me in the face.

I came up with, what I thought was a brilliant idea. Designing a publication that would feature writers and artists from the worlds of both comic book and science fiction and fantasy with only new art that should hopefully match the stories and editorial that our publication would showcase. I decided to design the magazine comic sized to make it easier to sell in shops and to make it a collectable.

So I launched Advanced Warning! and began the quest for talent to help me showcase my vision. I entrusted two of my closest friends from High School, Arnaldo Lopez and Tony Williams. And as has been written in other places, eventually I had come up with a different title for the magazine, after the then largest distributor in comics decided to shall we say redesign theirs to look like my original cover design.

After negotiations with them, I agreed to rename the magazine OffWorld, and then redesigned many elements of it to work with its new title and logo. Actually after all was said and done, I thought it OffWorld, was better for the genre of stories we were planning to publish.

Eventually the magazine came out, it was comic-sized, 64 pages, contained several tales of SF&F, which were all beautifully illustrated throughout with black and white and full color art. I spent 3 years working on the magazine and eventually we published 2 issues, with a 3rd on the way when I decided to end its run.

Of note: As we were publishing our 2nd issue, I had gotten word that a major publisher was gonna use our publication as freebie, it was gonna be our big push. I was informed over 100,000 copies of a mini-version of the magazine, which I designed using material from the first two issues, would be poly-bagged with it, and given away free as a promotional freebie for their mag. Sadly just I was readying the file to send to the printer, the publisher changed their mind, and the freebie never got printed. basically ending the life of my little self-published publication.

Besides the joy and wonder of seeing my idea come to fruition, the best part of creating OffWorld was getting the chance to strut myself as a designer. And even though I lost the war with OffWorld, because of my designs, I was offered an Art Director's job at Hachette Filipacchi Magazines.

So even though some might find my story a failure, I've always considered it to be my second college education. Because I learned as much or more then you could learn in four years at a design college and it cost me probably as much as a college education. I had to learn everything about putting out a magazine.

From designing the logo to art directing every aspect of it, designing all of its promotional material, convention displays and even its stationary. I had to learn about dealing with publishers and distributors and sadly attorneys too. I also learned how much I loved the magazine world, and eventually someday would like to bring back the title.

My biggest regret in the entire experience was two fold. to all our subscribers, I couldn't fulfill my promises in getting the magazine out and that all of the stories and art that I excepted and paid for including a beautiful full color illustration by the great Vincent Di Fate that was slated for our third cover, never saw print.

Anyway, above and below on my first post in my new blog, are a gallery of images from the magazine OffWorld, hope you like. In the near future I will be rescanning pages from the magazine.