The magazine seeks to redefine the way science is seen in popular culture.

Cool for nerds

SEED — a new magazine.

Adam Bly wants people to stop thinking that scientists are frizzy-haired men in lab coats, with pocket protectors and bubbling purple flasks. As founder and editor-in-chief of a new, ultra-cool 'science couture' magazine called SEED, he sees his mission as redefining the way science is seen in popular culture.

His inspiration was fired when, at the tender age of 18, he attended the 1999 UNESCO World Conference on Science in Budapest. He perceived there a discrepancy between the popular science media — as portrayed by the likes of Scientific American and Discover — and the evolution of science in popular culture. The media needed to evolve, he concluded.

So, with this in mind, Bly built up a media group, called SEED Group, with its headquarters in Montreal and with the magazine as its main focus, funded by private investors in Canada from the worlds of business, science and fashion.

SEED looks like a cross between Vogue and that monthly bible of cool, Wallpaper. Its first issue was launched in November, with a distribution of 100,000 across North America. Six issues a year are planned, along with a doubling of distribution.

The 176-page premiere issue, with a theme of birth, is filled with evocative imagery interspersed with factoids and a few longer essays, all in some way pertaining to science or technology. Topics range from the seductive powers of chocolate, to the bushmeat trade, to the demise of Starlab in Brussels.

The contributor list is impressive, leading with popular-science writer Matt Ridley — he of Genome fame — on the wonder and strangeness of human birth. The work of Felice Frankel, an MIT researcher and science photographer, and Karl Ammann, environmental photographer, also grace the pages. In between, male and female models in states of undress decorate fluffy sound-bites on consciousness and the language of lovers. Even the advertisements are sexy; there are no be-goggled biochemists showing off their favourite PCR in these pages — instead, pouty-lipped models promote fashion designers and alcohol distillers.

The written science is low level, although SEED's description of why the sky is blue — “blue waves agitate the elements of the sky, imparting their zeal” — can at least be said to depart from the typical scientist's mumblings about Rayleigh scattering and one over lambda to the fourth.

Priced below both Nature and Vogue, SEED is aimed at the science professional and “image-conscious science aficionados”. “We are targeting a sophisticated and affluent demographic,” says Bly. “The reader is a scientist who is looking for entertainment, to diversify his or her interests, and to learn how to influence culture.” Even the more conservative of Nature's readers are image-conscious, he believes. Any scientist who wants to get his experiment on the cover of Nature (or Science) shows his desire to produce aesthetically pleasing scientific imagery.

In the future there will be new sections devoted to the current icons of science — people who are part of Bly's vision of redefining science — the role the media plays in conveying science to the public, and the role of science in business and politics and vice versa. Top writers are continuing to sign up. According to Bly, the next issue will have contributions ranging from Nobel laureates and Pulitzer prizewinners. Why? Ridley, for one, strongly believes in the cause of making science more hip, and more appealing to young people: “Science has no need to be wordy with huge wodges of text.”

Bly set up a media group to leverage his vision into other ventures. He says that the next two years will be devoted to the magazine, but that they are also looking into book publishing and television projects in 2003.

At least with the magazine, scientists everywhere at last have a venue where they may find advice on de-frizzing their hair and replacing their scruffy lab coats with the latest Hugo Boss fashions.

European distribution of SEED will begin in March.