After finally finishing my exam project, I got my portfolio sorted and I had my interview at Tank Magazine on Wednesday. It was great to meet Masoud Golsorkhi, the editor and understand a little more about how Tank operates. He, in turn wanted to know what I was about, what I had taken form the course at Brighton and what my plans for the future were. He picked up on my love of set design within fashion photography and suggested I get some work experience doing window dressing too, which was cool. It was a smaller office than I imagined but a busy, dynamic environment nonetheless. I found it really interesting that all of the staff work together on projects. Everyone is briefed and then proposals are made and whoever has the best idea, runs that particular project. It was the same process that Ideo (a product design company in san-Fran) used and I really loved that idea when I visited them in February. This process spans not only across the magazine's articles but also the creative direction side and Tank TV, Tank Radio and O (the quarterly Observer magazine supplement that Tank publishes). So staff are involved in lots of exciting projects at the same time. 
Since buying my first issue of Tank (issue 3 of Volume 2), Tank is a magazine that has continually inspired and surprised me. I bought that issue around 6 years ago and it was one of the influencing factors on me specialising in fashion at art foundation. Masoud's 'Shot in the Dark' fashion story (left) with it's eerie, serpent-like women and ghostly feel to it and Thierry Van Biesen's colourful, kitsch. playful shoot were so different but both equally thought provoking. Then there was also a shoot by Lee Powers which included computer graphics over photographs of women, illustrating body jewellery. I was really inspired. Flirting with different sizes of magazine always kept Tank standing out from the over-crowded magazine rack too.
Not only is Tank full of ambitious fashion shoots but it has the same amount of interesting, witty articles and although they often address current issues, they don't only concentrate on latest, passing fads. Stylish and sophisticated, Tank is classic and each issue is precious as it is more timeless than many of its competitors. I can't think of one issue of Tank that I own which now looks really dated. Look out for the work of Wendy Bevan who has had some beautiful stuff in the last few issues of Tank-her photography is so surreal and dream-like...it reminded me of some of the stragely lit, mesmerising scenes in Children of Men.
So hopefully work experience this summer and who knows where that will take me...it would be the most fantastic opportunity to be working for a magazine as they enter into their tenth year of publication, learn more about their history and understand how they aim to progress over the next ten years.
Dissertation done, exam project in, job interview over. Feel like I have had a bit of a sugar crash! Tired tired tired but very inspired to make that extra push as full on as possible!
