One Small Seed

Cover Example

Now for anyone that does not know, One Small Seed is a contemporary South African pop culture magazine that was launched in 2005. One Small Seed is a platform for showcasing creative talent, doesn’t matter how big or small. The racial and cultural diversity of our South African people almost forces this magazine to adapt a multitude of writing styles as well as design elements. One Small Seed target audience is anyone who is looking for creative inspiration or wants to find out more about new creative talent all over the world, in all the different genres. The common genre of the magazine may be described as design/art/photography/architecture/music Because the content is so different it’s bound to have something you like, but hang on a second, like most popular culture publications this one basically says ‘You must be this tall to ride’, yep, it features a lot of imagery which the older generation might raise an eyebrow at. There is some form of nudity on at least one page but this in most cases due to photographer profile showing their work and needs to be viewed in an artist mind frame, it’s a form of art that not everyone can relate to or even understand but viewers must try be open minded. One Small Seed likes to take a slightly edgy approach to imagery and the writing is less formal, both attributes that appeal to me as a young adult reader.
People of all sorts appear here, be it toothless, dirty, nude, painted, whatever you can think of that is not considered ‘conventional’ magazine photography graces the pages of the magazine. It’s about reality, showing the creative talent as it is, they not worried about the conventional beauty that the world is almost obsessed about and that’s another reason I like this magazine.
Photography is great, but one thing that sets this magazine aside is the featured art. It’s great to see so many different styles merge together to create something that I have only seen in design publications. One Small Seed caters primarily to the youth and the art speaks for itself. Anything from Japanese Kawaii to African sculpture and beyond can be found here and the articles themselves are very down to earth, it seems that the authors just wrote town exactly what they heard from the artist rather than having a piece of forced edited dialogue stuck on the page.
The overall aesthetic of the magazine, the semi-hard cover prevents it from flapping around that the paper quality varies as one goes through the magazine, sometimes it’s to enhance an article by printing on special paper and other times it’s to divide the magazine into portions each having their own stylistic feel. The typography is clear and unobtrusive, easily readable sans serif type finds a perfect place amongst  the abundance of imagery, which is in fact what the majority of the magazine is made up of. If you’re looking for long-winded walls of text then this is not the place.

Layout example

 Articles are relatively short contrasting with the large images with a nice variation of overall layout. The style of the magazine may appear somewhat unusual to the normal person.  ‘One Small Seed’ has a unique style which they own, with a lot of design aspects which attracts the creative person.  The magazine also considers international style and culture, when designing their pages in order to connect to all across the globe.
The content of this magazine is very diverse, ranging from book reviews to music reviews, film reviews, editors letter and selected creatives, which is a different artist profile in every issue, though it’s difficult to write down what the content of One Small Seed is because they content differs every time.
Visit their website to view their digital magazines online , www.onesmallseed.com/category/one-small-seed/back-issues/