‘Rogue’ cover nominated in New York Festivals awards

MANILA, Philippines - Last week, upscale glossy Rogue was honored by the prestigious New York Festivals (NYF) International TV & Film Awards. The top-selling magazine’s augmented-reality cover of Solenn Heussaff in its April 2012 issue — described as “the first fully interactive magazine cover in the Philippines” — was nominated for Best Industrial & Multimedia Production by the festival’s 2013 jury, whose distinguished members include the CEOs and creative heads of HBO, Showtime, ABC, and ESPN.

“We were all thrilled to see the words ‘Rogue Cover (Philippines)’ listed among the nominees,” says editor-in-chief Paolo Reyes, who added that they competed against CBS News, Sony Ericsson, and the tourism boards of Stockholm, Gstaad, Poland, and Croatia for the award. “How do you bring a magazine cover to life? That was the challenge posed to us more than a year ago. For months, Rogue creative director Miguel Mari and I tossed around ideas with director Nicolo Reyes of Unitel, the Selecta-Magnum team, and Zappar’s London-based creatives until we found a cover concept that could seamlessly translate to a video, which we shot using Nic’s state-of-the-art Phantom Flex Hi-Speed camera.”

On the anniversary of their award-winning “moving cover,” Rogue released its annual Culture & Literature Issue (now available in leading bookstores and newsstands, and through Zinio.com/Rogue for the digital edition) earlier this month, their yearly “tribute to the power of the pen and the printed word.”

The face of this month’s Rogue is Manila’s original It girl, actress Giselle Töngi, who was photographed by Mark Nicdao and styled by Pam Quiñones wearing Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, and other top brands. The former MTV VJ talks candidly about her life offscreen, leaving Manila for Manhattan at age 21, and playing Marlene Dietrich in Piaf.

Headlining the issue is the lost, final interview of the late New York-based Filipino poet José Garcia Villa (“Jack Kerouac cornered me in the kitchen and propositioned me,” he claimed), which includes never-before-seen photographs of Garcia Villa with Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams in the 1950s; “The Battle Axes,” a historic portfolio of the country’s toughest female investigative journalists — Marites Vitug, Glenda Gloria, Raïssa Robles, Malou Mangahas, and Maria Ressa; “Where did all the Newsweeklies Go?” a retrospective feature on the Philippines Graphic, Liwayway, Mr. & Ms, and Free Press, written by publishing veterans Teddyboy Locsin and Letty J. Magsanoc, among others; “The Last Days of the Metropolitan” by multi-awarded playwright Floy Quintos, who looks back on the halcyon days of the now-decrepit Met Theater and its legendary patron Conching Chuidian Sunico; and in a contentious column, “The Belly of the Beast,” Palanca Award-winner and former judge Clinton Palanca breaks taboo by asking: Do the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature still matter?

Rogue, which has been creatively redesigned and reformatted since its bestselling March 2013 Travel Issue with Rhian Ramos, now includes new monthly sections such as Space (design, architecture, technology, and transportation), Agenda (gastronomy, entertainment, culture, and travel), and The Eye (fashion, style, grooming, and accessories) to address the six-year-old magazine’s dual male-female readership.

“With the new format, Rogue will be the only purveyor of cool and intelligent luxury in the local magazine space, catering to both affluent men and women,” says publisher Felipe “Ipe” Cruz III. “We would like to think of Rogue as always current, unapologetically chic, and elegant with an edge.”