Tyler Brule, he of Wallpaper* and Winkreative fame, has launched a new venture by the name of Monocle.  His new venture follows a familiar vein in his career; European focused, culturally and aesthetically driven, and let’s face it, fairly elitist.  However the man who started off his career at the BBC and was shot by a sniper covering the war in Afghanistan in 1994, has returned to his journalistic roots.

Monocle is organised around Affairs, Business, Culture, Design and Edits, with Edits being “vital life improvements curated in a fast-paced well-researched collection.”  Can’t argue with that!

He seems to have spared no expense, and the 75 pound subscription rate (10 issues a year) reflects that for sure.  What I like so far from a first glance is his use of various Web 2.0 technologies…each week there is a new Flash-based video for each section, sometimes available for download to your computer or iPod.

My favourite report so far is his Q&A video interview with the CEO of Lego, because, you know, who doesn’t like Lego.  While I may not subscribe to the print version I’ll definitely add this to my weekly reads on the web.

In an interesting aside, New York Times Art Director extraordinaire Steven Heller wrote a great contributing piece at DESIGNOBSERVER about the original Monocle (no relation) magazine founded in the late 1950’s.  It’s worth heading over  for a read, no less because this little blog has sort of patterned itself on Design Observer’s contributor based writings.