If you are looking to buy or sell a product, one quick Google search would yield you a list containing a hundred or so brands that you could either buy or compete with. From there, you would filter the list, narrowing it down to brands that would suit your style and filter them further according to budget, quality, and personal philosophies or advocacies. By the time you reach the end of the list, if you even reach it, you have gone through so much that you have most likely surrendered back to the top of your list then ended up buying something that is easy, convenient, or just another familiar brand that everyone probably already knows.
In an age where ideas can easily be translated into products through highly democratized means, meandering through aisles and aisles of brands in a shopping mall literally as big as a five football fields can be a little bit tricky, if not overwhelming. That’s not even including the even more expansive variety of online brands available at your disposal. The result is a surplus of choice. But what if you do not need to get lost in the noise? What if there is a whole new door that would help you get exactly what you want or help you build a brand that will be faithful to its purpose?
Serious Studio made a serious business of filtering a highly-saturated market both for consumers and entrepreneurs. Guided by the same principle of leading people to the brands that matter and helping visionaries find and establish their own relevance, they translated their ideas into a magazine that perfectly encapsulates their philosophy. Enter, The Serious Review.
“At its simplest, The Serious Review is our honest and thoughtful take on branding, business, and design ideas that matter to us as humans of the studio.”
Printed Copy of Volume 1
In their first ever issue, The Serious Review pushes us into the deep end of the pool, opening up a cache of brands that we might not have heard before. And that is the entire point, because The Serious Review directs our gaze to the outliers — brands that challenge the norms of consumerism by pushing a more purposeful existence. Brands that are not particularly big or loud, but those that are driven by their self-conscious impact, societal obligations, and genuine intentions towards their consumers.
At a glance, the magazine is filled with seemingly confounding gradient effects, retro color grades, and trippy patterns. But it was deliberately designed to transport you through visually distinctive worlds, echoing the studio’s campaign of breaking through the status quo. “The overall creative direction for this particular issue is ‘disrupting through design.’ We wanted to visually create elements in the middle of change, usually in the form of distortion, dynamism, and disassembly.”
For The Serious Review, the status quo of a heavily profit-driven market should be challenged by companies, designers, and consumers alike. And through its carefully curated features, the magazine aims to raise the criteria of how we choose and how we create by showcasing brands, ideas, and people that we can learn from.
Screenshots from the Digital Copy of Volume 1
“Right now — and especially now — the world is ready to alter its ways. This also reflects in the way we consume things.” And the publication’s arrival is nothing short of timely. At a time where the world has forced producers and consumers to reflect on how they do business, The Serious Review provides a chance for their readers to participate in creating new norms by giving them the option of supporting businesses that will make better choices, and in turn, make better impact to the people and the world they are living in.
“Consumers deserve better things not only for them but for the business they want to support, the people affected by it, and the planet as a whole.”
You may purchase the hard copy or download an online version of The Serious Review Volume 001: Outliers here. To know more about Serious Studio and what they do, you may follow their Instagram page or visit their official website.
