A Sense of Place

Indefinite Hiatus

It’s been a while since the 14th of February. Last Valentine’s, Issue 02 of Terroir Magazine was released to a pretty warm reception. This was followed up by the release of Issue 03 in August. There was supposed to be a new issue out last month, but alas, it won’t be coming. Terroir Magazine is going on an indefinite hiatus.

With every issue of the magazine, roughly four month’s worth of my weekends are burnt — either spent designing or printing to fulfill orders. I had thought that by coming out with three high quality concept issues, the magazine might be able to attract enough attention to secure funding from a publisher and distributor. As much as the magazine has been gaining a little mention from a few internationally well-known authorities, it has failed to attract attention where it needs to most — back home in Singapore.

A magazine that is priced so expensively such that only a few get to enjoy it has no future. A magazine with no readership is self-defeating. I had no choice to do it this way because printing on my inkjet is the best way to ensure that the quality of the magazine is at the standard that I deem it should be. Having bought samples of magazines from both Blurb and MagCloud, I was disappointed with the selection of paper stock, lack of binding options and overall less than stellar colour reproduction.

The option to port the magazine over to the iPad is tempting, but ultimately I feel that this isn’t what Terroir stands for. And so I have made the difficult decision to stop the magazine indefinitely. There are so many ways to improve the magazine and make it better! But I guess we shall have to let these ideas gestate for awhile.

In the meantime, I can finally enjoy my weekends! Or perhaps move on to other projects before returning to the magazine someday. During this interim, I bid you all farewell. It has been a rather amazing journey to see such a personal effort get to where it is today. Remember, don’t stop travelling!

Sincerely,
Benjamin Koh
Curator & Editor, Terroir Magazine

Taking the mags off the store for awhile to finish printing some orders and exhibition copies. We’ll be exhibited along with many other awesome magazines at Magazine Library on 13th May in the Daikanyama area of Tokyo, at the Hillside Terrace.

Keep you all posted! :)

Raffles Place in 1966/1967. Beautiful.

It’s taken slightly longer than 6 months, but TERROIR Magazine No. 2 is now available! Join us as we take you to Korea, Europe and Japan in this issue. Visit our updated website for more pretty pictures or head straight to our web store to purchase a copy. :)