For Top3’s fans, its catalogue issued each season had always been a compelling part of their brand story – a showcase for new products, a connection piece for the design-obsessed and a platform to relate the brand’s philosophy to the world.

It was a wondrous collaboration…until it wasn’t anymore.

Catalogues in the guise of desirable keepsakes, read from cover to cover and used as ongoing sources of inspiration, had virtually disappeared – replaced instead by too many cheap, disposable alternatives, which all-too-rapidly found their home in the blue recycle container.

Top3 realised that a channel, which had always been one of their most important links to customers needed to be completely reimagined, and so the Top3 Magazine was born.

To achieve this task, Terri Winter, chief executive officer, of Top3, appointed independent brand agency, DDI, to create a substantial and substantive bible for design aficionados, with the brief to produce “something tangible and definitive to hold in their hands as a valued resource, to keep coming back to until the pages are worn at the edges.”

“Inspired by Instagram stats showing that people can spend hours searching for ‘that perfect vase or cheese knife’, Top3 realised that far from wanting to just scratch the surface with a menu of design alternatives, its customers sought to curl up and lose themselves in a world dedicated to design and creation,” DDI noted.

“Our magazine gave us carte blanche to really embrace this insight and not cut short the conversations with our customers. It might seem strange that we’re going back to a magazine when so many say that magazines are dead, but we decided that rather than being forced to pay the earth for tip-ons and inserts, we’d just take ownership of the media ourselves,” Winter explained.

Caroline McLaughlin, managing director at DDI, added,  “There’s a trend right now called The Tactilians which talks to how much we crave touch both physically and emotionally in a world filled with sleek, cool surfaces.  Fact is, we now touch our smartphones more than any other surface, which is changing the way we process emotions. With a magazine such as Top3 Trends it’s easy to get caught up in the dream state, touching the stock of the pages and seeing beautiful objects. This is an unashamed disruptive play by a challenger brand known for always rewriting the rulebook.”

The new magazine will be in store from May 4.

Credits:

Agency: DDI

Founder: Bernd Winter

Head of Content: Rob Orme

Head of Production: Tillie Stephen

Creative Artworker: Simon Kaye

Retoucher: Justin Malinowski