If you like to read art and culture magazines but get easily turn-off by the usual trendy, oh-so-artificial glossy types out there, afraid not. Beautiful / Decay might be the magazine for you. What start-off as a black and white photocopied ‘zine way back in 1996, It have now grown into full-fledge professional magazine with a respectable worldwide circulation. I have the privilege to interview their creative director and founder, Mr. Amir Fallah to learn more about Beautiful / Decay. Special thanks to Sasha for making this interview possible.

Q. Hi, how are you? Your name suggested that you came from a family with a middle-Eastern background. Is this true? Or course, I am just guessing.
A. Yes it’s true. I was born in Iran but relocated to the US when I was around 7 years old.

Q. Why did you start this magazine in the first place?
A. Beautiful/Decay was started in 1996 as a black and white photocopied ‘zine that I made in high school with my friend Jay Littleton. We were 2 bored graffiti writers in the suburbs of Virginia with too much time on our hands and not a lot of outlets. Every weekend we would go to a lot of punk/hardcore shows in DC and flip through records, zines, and watch whatever bands happened to be touring at the time. I would always buy small zines from obscure towns and read them cover to cover. What I enjoyed about these DIY publications was that they were raw and full of personal content. I connected with the creators of the ‘zines and enjoyed hearing what they were into and why. As a result I started my own ‘zine that focused on some of the topics that I was into. Beautiful/Decay covered everything from art, graffiti, music and other subjects that peaked my interest. After about 3 issues of the black and white zine I stopped making it. Around 2001 I had the idea of starting a full color version of B/D. It would still focus on my personal interests but with a defined approach. I was still in college then and had absolutely no business or publishing experience. I just dove in and learned everything I needed along the way.

Q. Do you have a permanent editorial theme or does this magazine depends of contribution from fellow readers and supporters?
A. I’m not sure how other publications come up with their editorial but 90% of our content is derived from me stumbling onto an artist either via the internet or through an art show. The other 10% of the content comes from our permanent group of contributors who make suggestions for editorial.

Q. Is there any significant changes to Beautiful/Decay’s theme and content from the time it first started until today?
A. Over the years we’ve adjusted the content numerous times. We went from covering a lot of graffiti in the early days to focusing more on fine art. The magazine has always been an organic experiment, changing and shifting over time. With that said, I think we still carry the same mission, which is to document and support the best and most exciting art and design in the world.

Q. Majority of top magazines have more advertorials then the actual contents. How do you see the relationship between advertizing and content? How do you control it in your publications?
A. Advertising is a bit tricky and is my least favorite part of the job. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil. What we’ve done is to try to collaborate with our advertisers like Scion, Puma, and Toyota Matrix to do interesting inserts that are a work of art within themselves. This way, the reader gets a great creative insert and our advertisers still get to promote their product. These types of situations are ideal.

Q. Beautiful / Decay is now widely circulated here, in Malaysia. Do you get many comments or feedbacks from Asian people? Do you features Asian artist in your magazine?
A. That’s great to hear. I haven’t heard much feedback directly from the Asian market but I do know that we have fans out there. Every time a friend or associate goes to Asia they send me photos of the magazine or our apparel in shops there. It’s great for us to have such a wide reach. And yes we certainly have featured Asian artists in the past. Some of our favorite artists are of Asian descent include Aya Kato, David Chow, Saiman Chow, Ai Kijima, Pearl c. Hsiung and many others.

Q. What are some of you favorite books and magazine published or written by non-American?
A. I love artist monographs. I usually buy a couple a month. Most recent purchases are a catalog on Jeff Koons, Maurizio Cattelan, Tal R, and a biography on Damien Hirst.

Q. With the advance of technology, people are shifting from books and magazines to websites and weblogs. Do you think there will be a time that magazines will be the thing of the past?
A. No, I don’t think so. I think people will always want to have something that they can hold in their hands that is tangible. However we don’t make any bones about the fact that the internet has to be an important aspect of our company. Our site is filled with content both generated by us as well as our users. Fans of Beautiful/Decay can now go to our website to read our daily blog, look for interesting art galleries in our international gallery listing, and post their own art events and links right on our homepage.

Q.Apart from Beautiful/Decay, what other projects are you involve in?
A. One of our main focuses right now is developing our new sister company- Something In The Universe, or SITU for short. SITU is a creative think tank that utilizes the vast pool of creative contacts Beautiful/Decay has amassed while publishing the magazine over the last ten years. We offer a complete range of design services, i.e. print, web and apparel design, motion/television graphics, creative event consultation/production, and viral marketing. It’s been a great outlet for my team and I to experiment and work with other brands. You can take a look at some of our projects at www.somethingintheuniverse.com

Q. The US is going through an econimic recession right now and this must have effected you in one way or another. What are the pros and cons that you can see from this problems and how does it effect you and your publications?
A. Yes it’s true that the US economy is doing horrible at the moment. The nice thing for us is that we have a lot of international clients for our apparel who keep us busy. With the dollar being so low these days, Europeans and Asian shoppers can go to our shop and purchase our goods for a fraction of what it would usually cost. Not a bad deal considering just a few years ago It cost a small fortune to purchase US goods from other countries.

Q. Thanks for lending us your time. Any last words for our readers?
A. Thanks for the interview and support. We look forward to developing and expanding Beautiful/Decay magazine and apparel and Something In The Universe over the years, and continuing to produce projects that are developed from our unique perspective.

Website : http//beautifuldecay.com

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