Press Kits - Colors Magazine
Image
Gallery
COLORS: what it is
A magazine, a series of CDs, documentaries, books and
exhibitions
Established in 1991, under the editorship of Tibor Kalman, with the premise that diversity is positive but that all cultures have equal value, today COLORS is part of the publishing activity of Fabrica, Benetton's communication research centre. COLORS' editorial offices are situated in Fabrica's architectural complex, restored and enlarged by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, and it has a network of external collaborators in the four corners of the earth.
Pictures are, above all else, COLORS' expressive medium: a method that is universal and reaches the greatest number of people with a strong, immediate impact. Using this visual language, COLORS' themes alternate between the challengingly serious, such as ecology, wars around the world, the fight against aids, and the frankly frivolous such as shopping, fashion, and toys.
COLORS is a quarterly magazine read by young adults across the world. It is sold in over 40 countries; until now, its three editions were published in four languages. COLORS is also a website, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sites on the Internet.
The full series of COLORS issues was included in the 25/25 exhibition at the Design Museum, London (29 March-22 June 2007), which featured the 25 most influential design objects of the past 25 years. The magazine has received media accolades from all over the world, such as for example Good Magazine, an American bi-monthly cultural and lifestyle publication, which included the first thirteen issues, under Tibor Kalman’s editorship, in the ranking of the 51 best magazines of all times, or La Vanguardia, a Spanish daily which described it as one of the trendiest cultural magazines on the world scene. Colors has been also included in Inside the great magazines, a documentary trilogy produced in Canada that explores the evolution of magazines from their European origins to their current popularity and the powerful influence they have on our social, political and cultural identities.
COLORS PROJECTS
Today COLORS is not only a magazine, it’s a way of communicating and of using diverse media languages to interpret the world. COLORS’ experience and cultural background have engendered numerous editorial projects.
COLORS Music: a music collection based on the idea that music, like images, is a universal medium, transcending barriers and reaching the greatest number of people with a strong, immediate impact. COLORS Music selects music from various geographic areas and presents it in a novel contemporary context. Nordic, Cumbia, Ottomanic, Rio Funk and Inner Asian Pop have already been produced in co-operation with Irma Records, a Sony Music international label.
COLORS Books: 1000 Extra/ordinary
Objects, 1000 SIGNS and Colors Extraordinary
Records, published with Taschen; the recent series with Skira
Editore with the books Hunger and Yellow Pages;
the latest books, Faces and Violence, in the
COLORSNOTEBOOK series published by Birkhäuser.
A complex publishing agenda made possible by, amongst other things,
COLORS’ network of correspondents and photographers
in over 50 nations across the world.
COLORS Exhibitions: COLORS has organised exhibitions in prestigious venues in locations including Florence, Rome, London, Istanbul, Madrid, Barcelona, Maastricht, Budapest and San Francisco.
COLORS Documentaries: A new generation of documentaries to bring attention to major, diversity-based themes and to give voice to the stories of ordinary people: from Hong Kong to Patagonia to the Rocinha slum, to the Aral Sea, which was in 2004 awarded the first prize at the Torino Film Festival 2004, in the documentary section. Furthermore, COLORS regularly co-produces documentaries with the Swiss TV channel RTSI, including Shanghai Shanghai (an unconventional portrait of the city that is a symbol of modern China), Margens (audiovisual diary of a journey on the streets of Brazil) and Hunters since the beginning of time (to conclude the trilogy, after Patagonia and Aral, of documentaries about life in far-flung regions of our planet).
April 2009