Bloomberg Pursuits

Creative Director: Anton Ioukhnovets
Photo Director: Brenda Milis

Is this publication available on the newsstand? My guess would be no from the discreet use of cover type. Is the magazine both digital and print?
Bloomberg Pursuits is a global luxury and lifestyle magazine published quarterly and sent to Bloomberg subscribers all around the world. It is not sold on newsstands.
Bloomberg does have a Pursuits section on their website which features some of the articles in the magazine as well as providing a link to view the entire magazine digitally and a link to download the issue for free on the iPad.

Tell me about the editorial planning process, and how big is the staff?
Ted Moncreiff is the Editor of Pursuits, Anton Ioukhnovets is the Creative Director, and I am the Director of Photography. Our planning and production process is the opposite of having too many cooks in the kitchen: Ted comes up with ideas for the articles, reaching out to writers and editors he knows to help him gather as many leads as he can find. The three of us brainstorm on which stories have the most appeal to our readers both in terms of content and visuals. Similarly, we collaborate on how we want to treat and approach each article visually and the other photo editors, Lauren Winfield and Manuela Oprea, pitch photographer ideas according to the approach we have discussed for the articles they are working on.  It is wonderful to be part of such a small team that works so closely in building a brand.

What are the differences coming from national titles to custom quarterly titles aside from schedule? (Pro’s Con’s.)
I am also the DOP of Bloomberg Markets and work with Lauren and Manuela on that monthly as well so we do end up being busy! Markets and Pursuits are such different creatures so we never tire of any particular photography genre.

As far as the difference working for a national title and a custom quarterly, because I am working on both Markets and Pursuits, my day to day experience remains pretty similar to what I had experienced working at other newsstand magazines. Markets has a much larger editorial staff, so I am still going to as many meetings and dealing with as many editors as I did at other newsstand monthlies I had worked on previously.

How much synergy to you have with Bloomberg News both creatively and editorially?
Ted does have some Bloomberg writers and reporters pitch ideas for Pursuits articles that end up running in the magazine, but he also hires many outside freelance writers. As far as photographers, so far I have always hired outside freelance photographers to shoot for Pursuits.

You are hiring the cream of the crop, what is the running thread in all the images you commission? Describe the magazine’s aesthetic.
There is no ironclad aesthetic for the publication. We actually want to have a variety of photographic styles because of the variety of topics addressed.
Bloomberg subscribers are mainly men so there is a tendency for us to work in that vein, but overall we are a general interest magazine for Bloomberg subscribers, noting that Pursuits addresses the readers’ life outside of work, their time off. Since Anton and I both have backgrounds in men’s magazines, we are very much aligned in what we do like coming from that background and where we would like to break the mold and not follow traditional visual approaches to magazines created for mainly male readers.

Anton’s design sense is, in my opinion, stunning, and it is his design of the magazine that keeps the overall aesthetic consistent. We are both passionate about photography so ultimately I think we are always trying to come up with the best photographer and photographic style for each individual article –the nature and content of each story-and it is his design that pulls it all together so well. We are trying to make beautiful images that sometimes may have an element of surprise to keep things fresh and exciting.

Beginning production of a new publication definitely had its challenges in the beginning because we did not have a product to show or a brand’s reputation to rely on (we are just finishing our fourth issue next week).  We therefore relied on the relationships we already had with photographers and their agencies for the first issue and with each issue it gets easier, of course, to bring on the caliber of photographers we want, as we now have something to show and the response has been great.

Beyond the relationships we already had established with photographers before beginning production on our first issue of Pursuits together is the fact that Ted comes up with such amazing editorial ideas and content that photographers are excited to shoot for us.  Just three issues in we have been fortunate to be able to attract and assign some really fantastic photographers such as Richard Burbridge, Simon Norfolk, Ralph Mecke, Dan Winters, Horacio Salinas, Kenji Aoki, Tom Schierlitz, and Jamie Chung.

The Gander airport shoot was stunning, how hard was it to produce a shoot in a defunct airport?
It was Anton’s idea to shoot at Gander Airport. He had seen some images of the airport and realized what a fantastic location it would make for a shoot. This Newfoundland airport was an essential refueling stop for transatlantic prop planes from the time it was built in the late 1930’s until the 1960’s. But with the advent of jets in ’60’s, transatlantic refueling fell from favor and thus so did Gander.  After that the airport has mostly become the province of cargo planes so it’s 1959 interior has remained absolutely pristine, frozen in time.

While I immediately agreed that it was a wonderful location for our Fall fashion shoot, I knew just as quickly how challenging it would be to get everyone and the wardrobe itself up to Gander. Flying people from both Europe and the U.S. was tricky because there are so few flights going into Newfoundland, let alone Gander, none of them direct. Beyond that, however, is that the planes flying into Newfoundland are so small that they have very tight luggage limits so we had to make sure that the clothes and accessories were being checked in by as many people involved in the shoot as possible. Lastly, we didn’t book our models until the week of the shoot and I wasn’t sure there would be any room left on the few flights that could get them to the shoot in time. A bit of a nail biter but it turned out beautifully thanks to Anton, Azim Haidaryan, the photographer, Markus Ebner, our contributing Fashion Director and a wonderful, flexible crew!