According to Wikipedia, the word “Nox” refers to several meanings:

Nyx, a goddess of Night (nox is Latin for night).
NOx, a mixture of nitrogen monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. It is often produced as a pollutant.
Nitrous oxide when used to boost engine performance

Which of these meanings was the one intended by the name of the latest magazine to hit Jordan’s (and the region’s) newsstands is unclear to me. Maybe the third one: A booster of engine performance. Nox, after all, is a “men’s” magazine. Its tag-line (written in really small type under the appropriately pitch-black magazine logo) is: Indulge in Wordly Desires. (ehem).

The “small but perfectly formed” Shakira adorns the cover. There’s a football story featured prominently there too. We find a “Car vs. Girl” comparison (the Car wins, by the way). In the bottom bar we get more glimpses of what’s inside, which, along with film, music, cars, sport, gadgets, also includes “girls” (in that order).

With all this ‘performance boosting’ stuff on the cover, I expected to find pages and and pages of scantily clad women inside Nox. But I have to say my ‘hopes’ where dashed. Ok. This magazine is not TOTALLY devoid of ‘hotties’ but this ain’t no FHM. Even the Shakira main feature is quite ‘decent’.

I picked up Nox from a colleague’s desk the other day with a certain amount of caution. I never liked men’s magazine. To me, they represent a rather disgusting “lad culture” and its overt fascination with female models, alcohol and fast cars.

But now that the concept of a men’s magazine has arrived on our shores, and given the fact that I have a weak spot for publishing projects, I just had to take a look. And I have to say that in Nox’s case, you can’t always read a magazine by its cover.

Of course, the magazine does deliver on its promise of indulgence (cars, gadgets, smoking, vacations, entertainment, etc, etc). But the relative absence of skin was not the only surprise.

Take, for example, the presence of a feature entitled “Recycle City”, which tells the story of Mahmuoud Massad’s latest documentary which explores the “poverty, piety and politics of his hometown of Zarqa.” The article, written by Nox’s Editor-in-Chief Eddie Taylor, is depressingly realistic, made even more so by the concrete-colored photos of Sabri Hakim.

Only one page of advertising (for a luxury tower development, incidentally) separates the Zarqa story from another one that explores the world of underground political rappers in Palestine.

And the photos essay by Tania Habjouqa shot on the trash filled streets of Cairo shot during the final day of the world cup, would be more at home in a magazine like Colors or Bidoun than in a magazine for affluent males.

A men’s magazine in English, published out of Jordan for the the Jordanian, Lebanese and UAE markets can only happen at the intersection of West Amman’s consumerist glitz, entrepreneurial spirit and increased cultural sophistication, which have already produced magazines like Living Well, JO, Jordan Business and more recently Skin and Venture.

But for all its laddish pretentious, Nox has steered clear from being a total imitation of FHM, Loaded or Maxim. Even the design of the magazine, which is reasonably lively in the ‘regulars’ but borders on monotonous/inaccesible in the features, reflects a certain restraint. I mean, how else could one explain the choice of Futura as the headline font (unless the intention was to do a 70’s retro look).

Maybe ‘balanced’ is good word to describe this magazine.

The war in Lebanon has definitely overshadowed the launch of Nox (the war is noted in the contents pages). Lebanon’s war, stories from Zarqa and Palestine are reminders that the economic boom and increasingly affluent lifestyles are definitely not the only stories going on in the region.

But, for now, Jordan’s lifestyle publishing industry seems to be here to stay. And there’ll be another Nox next month.

Read these related posts on 360east:

• Toot gets Pulped
• The homeless blogger
• Ahmad Font makes a cool ad appearance in the Gulf
• ‘Ahmad’ typeface mentioned in Eye magazine
• It’s official: I am Jordan’s most popular blogger! 🙂