A Texas nouveau niche magazine: Adweek.com is reporting the launch of Brilliant Magazine, a new entry in the “super affluent” magazine category the rexblog dubbed recently, “the nouveau niche.” I didn’t realize we’d be trendspotting so quickly.

Quote:

DALLAS Brilliance Media is launching a magazine Tuesday devoted to “the finer side of Texas life,” according to the publishers.

The Austin, Texas-based independent company is targeting its luxury title, called >Brilliant, at the affluent Texan who will be interested in sections that focus on topics like tycoons, fashion, beauty, cuisine, arts and celebrities. The publication will skew to women with a median age of 35.

The website of inversely-capitalized bRILLIANT magazine says it is “gorgeous, sexy and extravagant,” all of which its website is inversely nOT.

I could live without it, really: Okay, just because I think a really, really long magazine article about the iPod makes for some great reading doesn’t mean I love mine or anything.

Quote from Steve Jobs (one of the best quotes I can recall on the topic):

”People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

A magazine writing life: The WP’s excellent weekly feature, “The Writing Life” (I recommend the collected essays in bookform), this week is by Walter Issacson, former Time Magazine writer, editor and CNN president, who is author of one of my favorite books of the year, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

Takes one to know one? Fortune magazine is running a feature which asks, Is Maxim magazine maxed out?

Have your heard? Lots of start-ups this year: Perhaps to distance himself from the belief that he doesn’t “do” articles about independent magazine start-ups, David Carr does his take on the whole 2003 magazine start-up story. Of course, he quotes the authority on that topic (for the second time in less than a month).

Quote:

Bradford Fayfield, a former Olympic skier and the founder and owner of Freeskier magazine, cobbled together a few issues for each of the last five years. But the magazine, which is aimed at younger skiers who are more than happy to drop into a half-pipe, seems to be finding an audience from its berth in Boulder, Colo., and has doubled its number of advertising pages over the last year. It has a growing national circulation, now at 75,000, and publishes five issues a year, all during the ski season.

“Me and the guys around here knew the athletes, knew the technology, knew the manufacturers and knew the resorts,” Mr. Fayfield said. “What we needed to learn was publishing. We were extraordinarily naïve, but I think we’ve learned how to get a quality product in front of our audience.”

If I get a chance, I’ll link back to several earlier versions of this whole, “there sure seems to be lots of start ups” story that now has been blessed by the NY Times as a full-fledged trend. (For example, here’s the Nashville version.) If you’re wondering, I’m already declaring Samir Husni the rexblog Man of the Year.

Christian makeup? Remember the vaporzine, Beautiful Girl Magazine. In a press release, the mother-daughter team launching it says it will be on newsstands next week. According to subscriber Kylene Scharf, 14, of Fon du Lac, Wis, “I’m so excited to have a new magazine where I can learn about make-up, fashions and great stories with a Christian view-point.” I would like to praise the Williams for succeeding in one category for which I’ve chided other vaporzines: They are launching a “first issue” during the month they promised.