CONCEPT: 1000 Words

Here's a magazine concept. I would love to link original art with original prose in some sort of publication. 1000 Words would be a cross between a photography mag and a lit mag. Each page can either be 1000 words of prose (well, i suppose 1000 words of poetry would be OK too) or a photograph/artwork.

No exceptions.

Well, that's a lie. I envision a split page, where the top is 500 words and the bottom is 500 words. Or the top is 500 words and the bottom is half of a photo. The crop is arbitrary — it crops off the top half of a photo if it resides on the bottom, the bottom half if it resides on the top. (I'm envisioning something like Nikki S. Lee's "Parts" series, though done en masse.)

But doesn't that privilege a writer, who gets to shape his or her writing for for the 500 word limit? I think not. Photographers would know ahead of time that their work would be a half-photo, so they'd use the crop to enhance their work. Plus, the cut can be interesting and artistic. It adds a bit of randomness into the photo.

The page could further be split into 250 words / 1/4 photo, but I don't have a mockup of that. 

Every page must reside within a pre-determined margin. 

Since we know that each page is one (or two) new photos or stories, all information can be put into the page folios. If it's a two-fer, there's enough space in the margins on the bottom to give the same information. I haven't figured out the four-fer.

Covers and ads must also fit these requirements.

Here are a couple of cover ideas:

And a mockup of a Prada ad (with a photo of the Prada Marfa project for kicks).

Oh, and it would to be a bigger mag so that words are still legible — 12" by 10".

(Yes, it would be extremely hard to fund something like this.)