Digital ‘UGLY Magazine’ launches
The launch event for UGLY Magazine saw a fantastic turnout at The Rose Establishment on April 13, accompanied by a performance from local band, The Folka Dots. UGLY is the first and only tablet-based app magazine that has been based out of Salt Lake City.
The publisher and founder is Salt Lake City local, Shadna Aum Atem, a community-minded character, an independent thinker and an asset to our city. His background consists of managing art galleries such as The Art of Giving (prior to its controversy), Stanfield Fine Art in Park City; has done advisory work for Martin Lawrence Galleries in Hawaii; he founded his own gallery, IAO Gallery, in 2007; and he eventually went on to work with the Hive Gallery in downtown Salt Lake City.
Originally an idea between Aum Atem and the folks at Hive Gallery, creative differences led to Aum Atem pursuing the project on his own. UGLY covers art, music, fashion and urban culture; and is set to cover food and drink reviews, and skateboard, ski and snowboard culture as well. Aum Atem says he was particularly inspired by Wired, the U.K. edition of GQ, and an online magazine called We The Urban.
“There’s a lot of influence that goes into it, but we’re hopefully creating something that’s unique to the area,” Aum Atem stated.
Condé Nast, the mother company of several national arts, culture and fashion publications currently has 27 websites and more than 50 apps.
“The entire Condé Nast line is now on tablets, and that really inspired me as far as creating a tablet-based magazine, because it could work. So when I saw that happening I decided it would be cool to bring that idea back to Salt Lake City and do it on the tablet platform because it’s a lot more affordable.”
One of the reasons Aum Atem started the magazine was his growing involvement in the local fashion industry through Sophie St. Clair of Sophie St. Claire Design Collections and Jordan Halversen of Halversen Design; and additionally his involvement in the three big, local fashion shows that occur each year: Art Meets Fashion, Fashion Night Out, and the Salt Lake Association of Fashion Designers.
“One of the things I noticed was that we have really great, talented designers that aren’t very well represented in a lot of the boutiques, so I thought it would be good to have a magazine that would really help promote getting all of them together.
So, where there’s a lot of talented design, I really want to marry the two, having good articles about the designers and trying to build a really good industry because I think fashion in Salt Lake City is really taking off right now.”
I asked Aum Atem what his thoughts were regarding the City Creek Center. He responded with, “I think it’s important economically for the city — you have the big companies and they spawn spending, they spawn commerce. But at the same time, how far do you want to go promoting that when you’re still trying to maintain a sustainable local economy?
I think now makes it more important than ever with all the advertising going on for the City Creek Center. There are a lot of big businesses there, and I’m glad they’re in Salt Lake, but at the same time I really think we need to pull together and make sure the local businesses get as much exposure as possible.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I couldn’t have said it better myself.
For the future, he’s going to refrain from UGLY going to print. He stated that there are already existing local printed publications that have that market “nailed down and represented really well.” His goal is to try to push the envelope, to try to get Salt Lake City to be more tech-savvy, “But I guess the ultimate goal would just be to continue to help promote a sustainable, local market, and just to throw another voice in the pot.”
Alison Reed is a fashion design student at Salt Lake Community College, which is home to one of the top and fastest growing fashion design programs in the state. I asked her to describe the fashion program there and what she predicts the impact of this type of publication will be for the local fashion scene.
“The program is pretty new, but it’s really developing. I just went last week to their student review fashion show and when I had gone last year it was not as well attended and didn’t have as much exposure as it did this year. This year, it was really well executed, a pretty well polished show, and really innovative designs. I really enjoyed it. Salt Lake Community College is pretty involved in the local fashion scene, and there are a lot of great, young designers building their portfolios.”
Regarding UGLY specifically, she said, “It’s good to raise more awareness through things like this, I think a lot of people want to support local businesses and local design, but oftentimes they don’t know who or where they are or where to start.”
Made for interactive content, UGLY will be released quarterly, with the first edition available for free to users. Subsequent issues will be a paid subscription of $3.99 per issue, and will be supplemented with free web content as well.
The first issue is currently available for the iPad, and will eventually be made available for Android-based tablets as well. UGLY will be releasing a few free special edition issues throughout the year as well. Web content can be accessed at UglyMag.com.