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VIZ MAGAZINE

It was around the time of the demise of Deluxe,  in mid-´78, that in appropriately select, upmarket areas could be found on the news-stands the first edition of VIZ.  VIZ has now settled down to appearing every six weeks as a visual arts magazine which fas often masturbatorily, precious words but which is invariably seductively scintillating to the eye. A short, slightly bored figure in his early forties, publisher and editor Ferry Zayadi draws nonstop the smoke from a chain of menthol cigarettes through his neat, pursed Cupid lips. VIZ is basically just a superior brand of this peculiar breed of magazine.  It is concerned,  says Zayadi, with ´advertising, graphics, fashion, photography, architecture, the visual side of the music business, jewellery design, stage design - all the visuals that make up our environment, essentially.´ Even so, Zayadi comes close to summing up the genre when he confesses,  ´I´m the end, I think it´s essentially people that matter more than what they´re doing´ The Italian-born Zayadi, a self confessed ´magazin freak´ who changed course from the profession of architect that brought him to England and used his grahics-steeped background to enter this rarified end of publishing, has about him a hard-nosed, perceptive professionalism. He is disparaging about his failed lesser competitors: `Very few of them seem to know exactly where they are going, and all of them seem to be populated with a lot of hangers-on whose only reason for being there is to be associated with a magazine.  There is a colossal waste of money, talemt and energy.  And really wha t they know of what´s happening is so limited : the same old boring names they come up with - the Chelsea/Kensington circuit . . .  There´s so much more happening than this stiflingly incestuous little area they deal with´ -   THE FACE MAGASZINE 1980   -