What is Taschen?
Taschen is a book/magazine by Benedikt Taschen. He started in Cologne, Germany with Taschen comics in 1980. They appear to set themselves up as a high quality, higher brow magazine than the standard shelf fodder by making it bi-annual wit content featuring mostly pieces about art, fashion, design and other creative industries.
There content has sometimes been controvesial or unusual.
Taschen has been a noteworthy force in making lesser-seen art available to mainstream bookstores, including some fetishistic imagery, queer art, historical erotica, pornography and adult magazines (including multiple books with Playboy magazine). Taschen has helped bring this art into broader public view, by publishing these potentially controversial volumes alongside its more mainstream books of comics reprints, art photography, painting, design, fashion, advertising history, film, and architecture.Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taschen
Although this content sounds taboo, possibly explicit or offensive to certain values it is incorporated in to their high quality, upper class image whereas it would be too easy for that content to appear as smutty or innapropriate.
What do Taschen do?
Taschen are a publisher of many books based around creative topics as discussed above. They print both high profile work and lesser known work.
What do Taschen want?
Taschen, as a publisher, have a bi-annaul magazine that functions as partly a catalogue. They want their magazine redesigned for new technology, specificially tablet devices such as the iPad and Samsung Galaxy. They currently have a free iPhone app of their latest issue but they want something more optimized for the platform, that uses the features and is not just the print format on screen.
Goals
In the D&AD brief Tashcen have provided an outline of their background and goals.
The TASCHEN Magazine has been in print for about 10 years. As a publication it directly creates a link with the readers. Helping to generate awareness of upcoming titles and deepening the relationship between TASCHEN and their customers.This success is partly why TASCHEN are looking to invest in its future and help to bring it to new audiences.This is the brief that I need to meet with my design.
History
The creator of Taschen, Benedikt Taschen, wrote a thank you message to the readers of Taschen published books that is n the website where he outlines in a nostalgic fashion how he got to where he is today.
When I was a boy, I appreciated people who treated me like an adult, because my interests were different from those of most of my peers; my mind was full of stories and pictures, and I was permanently looking for inspiration and food for thought. By respecting my passions—books, movies, art, and so on—my family and mentors helped me to grow and turn my imagination into reality.Source: http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/company/history2/index.comic_beginnings_surreal_success_and_magical_artists.htm
At the top of my wish list for birthdays and holidays were art books, which were more expensive than the regular boy's toys. And young me—fully aware of the fact that I was a lucky and privileged child raised by liberal and unconventional parents—sensed early on that books could open doors to different worlds, and that a world full of artists and free-minded spirits was the world I wanted to be part of.
I thought that others might feel the same if books became more affordable and accessible. Luckily this has been confirmed by millions of readers who have bought our art monographs, starting with the first ones published in 1985.
He tells a personal story and how his upbringing is reflected in the subject of Taschen. He wanted to represent his interests in print that he didn't feel were present in the marketplace.
He then lays out some of the workings in starting up the magazine:
Our gang of young punks from Cologne became an international success story: in the 80s the key players were our two authors and editors, Ingo F. Walther and Gilles Néret (pictures 4 and 7, sadly both no longer alive) and our brilliant sales mind, Ludwig Könemann (picture 15, alive, but for two decades no longer with us). They laid the foundations for what became a truly international team of highly skilled and outrageously creative folks who have edited, designed, produced, promoted and sold more than two thousand subsequent titles.After there Cologne shop they have set up retail outlets in Berlin, Brussels, Hollywood, Miami, London, New York, paris and more.
Source: http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/stores/index.taschen_stores.htm
It is clear Taschen is a well established magazine being 30 years old and having stores in a large number of the most populated and famous cities of the world. Their image reflects this worlwide, established background.