Welcome to AUGUST.

AUGUST is a new kind of travel magazine: Each issue focuses on one location, immersing the reader in its rich art, architecture, and design scene, and sharing encounters with locals, their habits, and their pleasures—in other words, the sights and souls that form the fabric of each city’s unique culture. 

When I was starting this new enterprise and struggling to describe the essence of the project, I defaulted to the Hollywood mash-up pitch. “AUGUST is the lovechild of Nest and National Geographic,” I would tell friends. Nest, of course, is the late-’90s brainchild of Joe Holzman—the cult interiors magazine that broke the mold for all interiors magazines to come. Each issue was a revelation and a master class in rule-breaking, from what to show to how to show it, often in dramatic forms that included die-cuts and scalloped pages featuring the collage-like residences of idiosyncratic personalities. The rash of niche publications on newsstands today (or at least, the good ones) all owe a debt to Nest. Then there’s National Geographic, which needs no introduction or context; it has been the stable of every decent dentist’s office and home den since I was growing up. What is influential about Nat Geo is that they didn’t show “new” things, but rather old stuff (much of it very old) that you hadn’t known existed before, and which after reading, changed your world entirely. 

It is this sense of discovery, excitement, and rule-breaking that has informed the shape of AUGUST. I hope each issue, each story, will be a discovery, capturing a sense of wonderment that is often missing in our media-saturated lives—a sense of experiencing something for the first time. The best of design, and all of good travel, is about encounters rather than things. I hope that in combining my two favorite obsessions, this journal may impart a shared experience with personal meaning.

Travel, as they say, is not only about the destination, but the journey itself. I add to that by saying that it is also about the travel companions. I have been lucky on this first journey to have many friends both old and new as fellow travelers. My deepest thanks to the many talented writers, photographers, and minds who have contributed their time and efforts to AUGUST. I hope this kind of sustained deep dive will be both exhilarating and transformative for readers and travelers.

—Dung Ngo

Contact

info@august-journal.com

Masthead

AUGUST
A Journal of Travel + Design

Editor in Chief: Dung Ngo

Contributing Photographers: Irina Boersma, Robin Broadbent, Nicholas Calcott, Francois Dischinger, Adrian Gaut, Oberto Gili, Manfredi Gionacchini, Francois Halard, Elizabeth Heltoft Arnby, Matthew Johnson, Thomas Loof, Joss McKinley, Yoshihiro Makino, Fabian Martinez, Chris Mottalini, Vincent Munoz, Ngoc Minh Ngo, Eric Petschek, Jason Schmidt, Martyn Thompson, Leslie Williamson, Marc Yankus, Andrew Zuckerman

Contributing Writers: Glenn Adamson, Darrin Alfred, Sarah Archer, Frederik Bille Brahe, Alix Browne, Diana Budds, Ricky Clifton, Jean-Phlippe Delhomme, Phillip Denny, Franklin Getchell, Wendy Goodman, Sam Grawe, Fritz Haeg, Sophie Aliece Hollis, Jordan Hruska, Aileen Kwun, Alexandra Lange, Ambra Medda, Murray Moss, Jeni Porter, Emilie Rasch, Signe Tereneziani, Matt Tyrnauer, Pilar Viladas, Alexa Griffith Winton

Contributing Illustrators: Brian Alfred, Francois Berthoud, Soren Behncke, Jean-Phlippe Delhomme, Zebedee Helm, Cecilia Ruiz, Rob Wilson, Olimpia Zagnoli

Guest Editors: Noemi Bonazzi, Ana Elena Mallet,

Creative Direction & Design: MEMO NY