Mr. Magazine™ Interview: How TAG Is Reinventing Kids Magazines

At a time when so much of the media world is focused on AI, algorithms and keeping audiences engaged on screens, Anthony Deptula is betting on something decidedly different: paper.

Deptula, an illustrator, artist and storyteller whose creative career has included Disney Interactive, Maker Studios, YouTube and Netflix, is the founder and editor-in-chief of TAG, an oversized, interactive print magazine that invites kids to draw, write, make comics, tear out pages, erase things and become part of the publication themselves. Developed with the help of his nine-year-old son, Hugo, TAG grew out of Deptula’s belief that kids were losing some of the creativity and interaction that once came naturally to them.

In his latest Mr. Magazine™ interview, Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni talks with Deptula about the unlikely idea of launching an ink-on-paper kids magazine in a digital age, and why that may be exactly the point.

What makes TAG interesting isn't nostalgia for print. Deptula is taking the things that make print different, its physicality, permanence and ability to be touched, changed and even destroyed, and turning them into the experience. Kids aren't supposed to carefully preserve TAG. They're encouraged to make it their own.

There's also a larger media lesson here. As publishers, brands and communicators continue looking for new ways to create engagement and build community, TAG is a reminder that innovation doesn't always require another piece of technology. Sometimes it comes from looking at something familiar in a completely different way.

Husni and Deptula talk about the inspiration behind TAG, building a new magazine without major funding, the influence of publications including Highlights, why some kids today don't even know what a magazine is, and Deptula's determination to create something that doesn't talk down to them.

Read the full Mr. Magazine™ interview with Anthony Deptula:
TAG: An Interactive Print Magazine for Children