We’ve been nominated for 9 NMAs, including Magazine of the Year!
We’re thrilled to announce that Maisonneuve received nine National Magazine Award nominations, including for the coveted Magazine of the Year prize. That also puts Maisonneuve among the top ten most-nominated magazines (tied for tenth this year with Cottage Life) for the fourth year in a row. Congratulations to all our contributors and editors, as well as to all of the worthy nominees from Canada’s many wonderful magazines! Congrats especially to the two other nominees for Magazine of the Year, Outdoor Canada and Sportsnet.
Maisy’s nominations:
Magazine of the Year
Investigative Reporting
Selena Ross
“Getting Plowed” (Issue 42—Winter 2011)
One of a Kind
Julie Salverson
“They Never Told Us These Things” (Issue 40—Summer 2011)
Personal Journalism
Kaitlin Fontana
“We Will Not Leave This Place” (Issue 42—Winter 2011)
Politics & Public Interest
Eric Andrew-Gee
“Our Tar-Sands Man in Washington” (Issue 42—Winter 2011)
Science, Technology & the Environment
Ira Basen
“Age of the Algorithm”(Issue 39—Spring 2011)
Art Direction for a Single Magazine Article
Anna Minzhulina
“Monuments: The City in Three Parts” (Issue 39—Spring 2011)
Creative Photography
Andreas Rutkauskas
“Virtually There” (Issue 40—Summer 2011)
Illustration
Gérard Dubois
“After Jack” (Issue 42—Winter 2011)
Winners are announced in Toronto on June 7.
A peek at Maisonneuve’s cover-design process
How do our covers wind up looking the way they do? Here’s a quick look at a few ideas that didn’t make the cut.
For our tenth anniversary issue, our art director Anna Minzhulina designed a simple, classic cover. Note the logo in the “10,” the strong cover lines and the corner slash:
But she also brainstormed plenty of other ideas. (Please note that all cover mock-ups in this post may include placeholder, non-final text.) Here are a few. One is intended to look like a liquor label; another is composed of the ingredients of a half-finished birthday cake; the third uses tree rings to represent our growth; and the final also plays on the birthday theme:
Our Winter 2011 cover story was a big investigative feature on collusion and violence in the Montreal snow-removal industry. We wanted to make the cover text-heavy and really push the story. Here’s the final cover, with an illustration by Victor Kerlow that plays on the iconic Tiananmen Square photograph:
Now, here are some of Anna’s mock-ups, featuring other illustration ideas:
Our Fall 2011 cover story was a look inside the secretive world of Canada’s exotic-animal trade, and the cover featured a big, bold image of a tiger staring directly into the camera, wearing a collar that reads, “Mr. Cuddles”:
The idea was to contrast the ferocity of the animal with the cheesy domesticity of pet ownership. One of Anna’s other ideas played on the same theme, but set the scene in the backyard instead:
Finally, our Summer 2011 cover story was a profile of the up-and-coming Canadian comedy group Picnicface. Here’s the final cover, photographed by Aaron McKenzie Fraser. We set it in a hospital, to play on the theme of Picnicface “saving” Canadian comedy:
This time, Anna really went all-out in her mock-ups: she assembled little plasticine dioramas of the group. Two of them were supposed to represent a “class photo,” which was our other main cover concept, while the third is a rather more lurid version of the hospital concept:
Curious about what our next cover will be? You’ll just have to wait until June to find out.
Our tenth anniversary issue is on stands today!
Our special tenth anniversary issue is on stands across Canada today! Featuring:
—The science of tone deafness
—What really happened at Occupy Toronto
—My father the bank robber
—New fiction by Giller Prize–winner Johanna Skibsrud
—Why Quebecers love Iron Maiden
—The fringe fest goes mainstream
—Arcade Fire loses a Battle of the Bands
—Overdosing at Burning Man
—The rise of DIY 3D printers
—Nun porn
—Ontario’s abattoir crisis
—New poetry by Trillium Award-winner Ken Babstock
—Never-before-translated work by the late Nelly Arcan
—Cultural change in Nunavut
—A new comic column by Marc Bell
—Spring’s best books and albums
Buy it today! Spread the word!
Our tenth anniversary issue
A sneak peak at Maisonneuve’s Issue 43 (Spring 2012), on newsstands everywhere April 2.
In the world of Canadian small-magazine publishing, ten years is a long time—and hitting your first decade is a story in itself. That’s why, for the cover of our special tenth anniversary issue, Maisonneuve decided to push not one individual feature but the whole package. Here, art director Anna Minzhulina has crafted an elegant visual celebration of our tenth birthday. Front and centre is our iconic little logo, known around the office as simply “the Maisy guy,” though he actually represents Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the complicated, imperfect founder of Montreal. Like our hometown, this magazine is an energetic, frustrating work in progress, the product of little triumphs and hard struggles. We’re glad to have made it this far. The question now is: what will we put on the cover of our twentieth anniversary issue?
In this issue:
Tim Falconer on the surprising science of tone deafness.
Paul Gettlich on what really happened at Occupy Toronto.
Deni Y. Béchard remembers his bank-robber father.
Christopher Szabla on why movements like Occupy and the Arab Spring fail.
John Semley uncovers why Quebecers love Iron Maiden.
Megan Lau dives into the quirky world of DIY 3D printing.
Peter Tupper on the strange history of nunsploitation porn.
Whitney Mallett investigates Ontario’s abattoir crisis.
Chris Urquhart flies too close to the sun at Burning Man.
Robert Poulton documents cultural change in Canada’s north.
Marianne Ackerman profiles the most hated man in independent Canadian theatre.
Sean Michaels remembers the time he saw Arcade Fire lose a Battle of the Bands.
All this, plus new fiction by Giller Prize–winning author Johanna Skibsrud, new poetry by Trillium Book Award–winner Ken Babstock, never-before-translated work by the late Nelly Arcan, a new comic column by Marc Bell, spot illustrations by Vanessa Davis, a trip through Maisonneuve’s ten-year history, the Book Room and the Music Room!
On newsstands everywhere April 2!
— An owner on his pet mountain lion. Read our investigation into the bizarre world of Canada’s exotic-animal trade.
Presenting Maisonneuve’s first annual Genre Fiction Contest!
“La Sortie de l’opéra en l’an 2000” by Albert Robida.
Presenting: Maisonneuve’s first annual Genre Fiction Contest!
Starting now, Maisonneuve will run a literary contest every year, with the contest’s genre changing from year to year.
This year’s theme: science fiction.
(In future years, it could be fantasy, romance, noir—who knows! But it’s SF this year.)
Send us your finest original stories of the future, near-future, utopias, dystopias, aliens and the unknown limits of the universe!
Click here to read the complete contest rules and submit your work. Good luck!
