Questions from the Curious.

Why did you take all advertising out?

How to create a monster:

Here's how it normally works. You decide to publish a magazine. It will be an exciting adventure. It will be a chance to bring people together. You will get to create a small work of art and talk to fascinating people and gather all kinds of content - illustrations, photographs, essays, interviews, stories, and poetry. You are feeling lightheaded, tipsy with the possibilities. You dance. You sing. You write a light opera.

Reality sets in. At the very least You need to gather content and then pay a graphic designer to lay it out and then pay a printer to print it and then pay someone to get into the hands of people who might like to read it.

Like most artistic ventures, this takes money. You offered the printer magic beans but he's smarter than Jack and insists on cold hard cash. The graphic designers have used up the last of their winter nuts and berries and would like to buy a Tuna Sandwich. They keep fainting at the keyboard which results in a lot of jjjjjjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkkk . They are designers and it is pretty but you are not sure if anyone would understand it.

And then it hits you like a bolt of lightening or warm soggy sponge. You will gather advertising. A few unobtrusive pages to finance pages and pages of thought, story, and color. You think you are clever.

Somewhere, the god of advertising is laughing realizing that you are about to create a medusa that will begin to swallow your time and then go for your still beating heart. It starts with a few phone calls and a small database. You realize advertisers want more impressions (otherwise known as eyeballs) which means you need to find more readers. This means you have to produce more magazines and pay more postage to deliver those magazines. This means you need more advertisers. More phone calls and a bigger database. Now you need more people to help you get advertising or nothing else will get done. So you hire someone. Which means you need more advertising. And possibly higher ad prices. Which means more impressions (print more magazines and you know the routine from here).

Soon many of your beautiful pages are no longer beautiful. The messages of the advertising- some trite, some manipulative - are beginning to bleed into your carefully constructed interviews and thoughtfully placed stories. You feel nauseous. You don't want to do this anymore. You wanted to gather a community of readers around a small but lovingly created piece of art in the form of a magazine. But you've ended up with a bloated pile of paper, one third of which is now advertising.

You get a gleam in your eye. It's time to kill the monster. But first—another light opera.

Where does your money come from?

We trade the magazine for things known as dollars. And sometimes as pounds and euros. We have lingered over a bag of magic beans from time to time but our offices are small and we hear those beanstalks are difficult to keep. Lots of pruning.

We sell single issues. We  active pursuing new subscriptions and thus new members of the Beyond community. It is best for alternative media to be supported by its readers. This gives us the flexibility to go in different directions from the norm as well as asking readers to be participants in Beyond and not just consumers of it.

We also apply for grants and accept donations. Go to our Support Section. Do not pass GO but collect $200 if you like. We're all for free money.

Why Don't You Just Go Digital?

The Short Answer: Because we like pain.

The Medium Answer: Because we like pain a lot.

The Long Answer: Okay, you asked for it. We like digital as you can tell. We eat bits and bytes for breakfast along with a glass of orange juice and some low fat milk. However, we think medium and message are important. We're glad that people are still drawing and painting and not giving it all up for Photoshop. And we are glad that people still play guitar and oboe and violin. Just get out your favourite 80's movie complete with synthesizer soundtrack. What if the world decided all we needed was those crazy Casio beats? We don't feel well just thinking about it.

And there's a reality that is very important to us: Not everybody knows how to use the web or can afford access to it.

Beyond is meant to be a piece of print. We love that it exists on paper and lies around coffee tables and mysteriously finds its ways into the hands of friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) people. We've received envelopes made from old Beyond bits and spotted Beyond pieces on everything from fridges to dormitory doors. And did we mention, we like pain?

How do you get food coloring out of fabric?

Hmm. A very, very tough question. We've heard a little hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball could work. But be careful and don't take our word for it. We're much better with the whole "two trains leaving from Chicago" scenario.

If things are so difficult ,why don't you just add advertising back in?

Have you seen "How to create a monster"?

We are uncomfortable with hosting a conversation about beauty, hope, social justice, art and general silliness that is presented side by side with messages that are in direct contradiction to what we are trying to portray. We value so many things and feel that the artists and poets of our time are being co-opted to produce various kinds of advertising instead of art. How could we present an article about child labor next to an ad for something that may use that kind of labor to produce its goods? We see magazines promoting "simplicity" as a commodification rather than a human responsibility. That doesn't make sense to us.

Seriously, we think there is something kind of dangerous about seeking advertising as the only way to create something anymore. It can be a way but should it be the only way? So we thought we'd like to try this. Someone once said "Be the group that tried." And so we'll keep trying.

Why did you take all advertising out?

How to create a monster:

Here's how it normally works. You decide to publish a magazine. It will be an exciting adventure. It will be a chance to bring people together. You will get to create a small work of art and talk to fascinating people and gather all kinds of content - illustrations, photographs, essays, interviews, stories, and poetry. You are feeling lightheaded, tipsy with the possibilities. You dance. You sing. You write a light opera.

Reality sets in. At the very least You need to gather content and then pay a graphic designer to lay it out and then pay a printer to print it and then pay someone to get into the hands of people who might like to read it.

Like most artistic ventures, this takes money. You offered the printer magic beans but he's smarter than Jack and insists on cold hard cash. The graphic designers have used up the last of their winter nuts and berries and would like to buy a Tuna Sandwich. They keep fainting at the keyboard which results in a lot of jjjjjjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkkk . They are designers and it is pretty but you are not sure if anyone would understand it.

And then it hits you like a bolt of lightening or warm soggy sponge. You will gather advertising. A few unobtrusive pages to finance pages and pages of thought, story, and color. You think you are clever.

Somewhere, the god of advertising is laughing realizing that you are about to create a medusa that will begin to swallow your time and then go for your still beating heart. It starts with a few phone calls and a small database. You realize advertisers want more impressions (otherwise known as eyeballs) which means you need to find more readers. This means you have to produce more magazines and pay more postage to deliver those magazines. This means you need more advertisers. More phone calls and a bigger database. Now you need more people to help you get advertising or nothing else will get done. So you hire someone. Which means you need more advertising. And possibly higher ad prices. Which means more impressions (print more magazines and you know the routine from here).

Soon many of your beautiful pages are no longer beautiful. The messages of the advertising- some trite, some manipulative - are beginning to bleed into your carefully constructed interviews and thoughtfully placed stories. You feel nauseous. You don't want to do this anymore. You wanted to gather a community of readers around a small but lovingly created piece of art in the form of a magazine. But you've ended up with a bloated pile of paper, one third of which is now advertising.

You get a gleam in your eye. It's time to kill the monster. But first—another light opera.

Where does your money come from?

We trade the magazine for things known as dollars. And sometimes as pounds and euros. We have lingered over a bag of magic beans from time to time but our offices are small and we hear those beanstalks are difficult to keep. Lots of pruning.

We sell single issues. We  active pursuing new subscriptions and thus new members of the Beyond community. It is best for alternative media to be supported by its readers. This gives us the flexibility to go in different directions from the norm as well as asking readers to be participants in Beyond and not just consumers of it.

We also apply for grants and accept donations. Go to our Support Section. Do not pass GO but collect $200 if you like. We're all for free money.

Why Don't You Just Go Digital?

The Short Answer: Because we like pain.

The Medium Answer: Because we like pain a lot.

The Long Answer: Okay, you asked for it. We like digital as you can tell. We eat bits and bytes for breakfast along with a glass of orange juice and some low fat milk. However, we think medium and message are important. We're glad that people are still drawing and painting and not giving it all up for Photoshop. And we are glad that people still play guitar and oboe and violin. Just get out your favourite 80's movie complete with synthesizer soundtrack. What if the world decided all we needed was those crazy Casio beats? We don't feel well just thinking about it.

And there's a reality that is very important to us: Not everybody knows how to use the web or can afford access to it.

Beyond is meant to be a piece of print. We love that it exists on paper and lies around coffee tables and mysteriously finds its ways into the hands of friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) people. We've received envelopes made from old Beyond bits and spotted Beyond pieces on everything from fridges to dormitory doors. And did we mention, we like pain?

How do you get food coloring out of fabric?

Hmm. A very, very tough question. We've heard a little hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball could work. But be careful and don't take our word for it. We're much better with the whole "two trains leaving from Chicago" scenario.

If things are so difficult ,why don't you just add advertising back in?

Have you seen "How to create a monster"?

We are uncomfortable with hosting a conversation about beauty, hope, social justice, art and general silliness that is presented side by side with messages that are in direct contradiction to what we are trying to portray. We value so many things and feel that the artists and poets of our time are being co-opted to produce various kinds of advertising instead of art. How could we present an article about child labor next to an ad for something that may use that kind of labor to produce its goods? We see magazines promoting "simplicity" as a commodification rather than a human responsibility. That doesn't make sense to us.

Seriously, we think there is something kind of dangerous about seeking advertising as the only way to create something anymore. It can be a way but should it be the only way? So we thought we'd like to try this. Someone once said "Be the group that tried." And so we'll keep trying.