Komfort Mag: Something to Read by a Pond or a River

}ji59 macek] If you think, despite all the magazines that exist, that there are only a few you would like to read or even want to leaf through, prick up your ears. Komfort is a magazine for which a bunch of friends chipped in to create something new and exciting. In the magazine, one can find photos of pools with apples, a car cemetery, an ecohouse, a map of the famous drowned, instructions on how to play Battleships, original blanket patterns, and many more beautiful things. It is simply something to read by a pond or a river.

It is as if you started playing with your memories, with moments from when you were looking at something. Even though nothing was happening, you were feeling really good. Komfort reminds me most of the British photographic magazine Big. Even though Komfort is written in a lighter tone (or more personal tone), readers find themselves in spaces dominated by the visual language. Photos, graphics, film perspectives, and dreams open and close all of our affections. The fact that there is a water sprite on the cover and, instead of an editorial, there are instructions on how to help somebody who is drowning, clearly demonstrates how to read the magazine.
One hundred pages of the magazine present a gorgeous photographic series by Václav Jirásek, Jiří Thýn, Petra Steinerová, and Dušan Tománek. Film director Tomáš Luňák (videoclips for EOST, sk4T, Prouza, jingles, and film presentations for Czech Grand Design) made skillful photos as well. So did graphic designer Robert V. Novák (Galerie Rudolfinum Gallery, Expo 58, Dekadence, Langhans Gallery). Dušan Tománek turned into a reporter and wrote the essential text of the issue: an interview with architect Hrazdíra, whose ecological house exceeds our wildest architectural dreams.
I am not going to tell you all what you can find inside the magazine. However, I simply must mention the instructions on how to play Battleship, summer blanket patterns designed especially for Komfort, and the encyclopedic map of where famous the drowned. Therefore, take a comfortable seat and draw five ships into a square. Do you know that that the inventor of the combustion engine, Rudolf Diesel, committed suicide on September 30, 1913 when he jumped from the ship Dresden on its way from Antwerp to England?
The first issue has just come out. The second one will come out in six months.

Publisher Dušan Tománek, graphic design: Olga Benešová and Radek Sidun, price CZK 99, www.komfortmag.cz

< back