Is Not Magazine is a project initiated by Stuart and Jeremy (with Mel Campbell, Natasha Ludowyk and Penny Modra) in 2004. It has been published as a four-sheeter (2m x 1.5m) bill poster on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney since April 2005. It publishes a range of fiction and non-fiction content in many forms including, but not limited to, 2000 word essays, 300–500 word columns, comics, illustrations, diagrams, and 160 character (text message length) ‘flash fictions’. There is also a crossword.
Is Not is an experiment in publishing, design, reading and community building. It explores a grey area created by the crossover of two themes for each issue (love/lust, seeing/believing, habit/addiction, etc), carries no advertising, is funded through launch events for each issue and thus lives or dies by the participation of the community that has sprung up around it.
In 2006 Is Not Magazine won the Premier’s Design Award for Communications Design as part of the State of Design festival. It has also been presented at conferences and been written about at length innumerable times in the design press and mainstream media in Australia and internationally.
