In Montreal the other day, while our significant others checked out knickknacks for us to carry through the streets for them for the rest of the night, a friend and I had our senses assaulted by a magazine that clearly stood out from the rest.
Images via Ankama Shop
At first glance Hey!, a magazine of epic proportions looks like hipster art at it’s finest, but as you begin pouring over the articles and art within, you quickly realize that it is truly a work of passion by people who are just doing what they love to do. Hey! is published in France, but it just happened to be in a store we wandered into. God I love Montreal. All of the articles in the magazine are in both English and French and the artwork within is all phenomenal and very eclectic. It offers interesting pieces on modern art and popular culture, featuring artists from a wide range of disciplines. The magazine is almost 150 pages and consists of interviews, stickers, cartoons and quite a few full pages of artwork. On top of all of that, Hey! doesn’t have a single advertisement in it. At $33 Canadian, the price is more than your average magazine, but the sheer awe and jealousy that this magazine will inspire from your uber-hipster friends when they spot it on your coffee table, bedside table or in your selection of bathroom reading makes it well worth the price.
Images via Some Cool Stuff
The format of Hey! makes it eye catching and completely different than any magazine I’ve ever seen, with articles switching between landscape and portrait styles at random. The amount of effort that must go into producing just one issue of this magazine is mind blowing to even consider.
An excerpt from the first edition which is reproduced on the HEY! Blog reads as follows:
Today, the spirit of the street and of the common people is everywhere. Cartoons
appear at Cannes. Artists produce toy collections. Tattooing is elevated to the status of art. Graffiti has opened a door that contemporary art can no longer ignore. Same goes for
comics. The alternatives of yesteryear, our refuges, our borders, our networks are cast into the spotlight. So we throw ourselves into the breach and declare sovereignty
over a rare corner that we still possess. Hey! is our vocal cord; Europe our loud speaker.
Some of the magazine goes a bit more into the art scene than is necessary for the casual reader but that’s what one should expect when purchasing a magazine of this sort. If you have a magazine shop near you that features bi-lingual or even foreign magazines, have a look for HEY!
Other than a blog on the Ankama website, there’s very little in the way of an online footprint to Hey! at least from what I can find. No Twitter or Facebook fanpages to speak of. Which just gives you all the more reason to try and find one locally or order it online.
For Your Brentertainment 