For its 15th anniversary, the Giordano Bruno Foundation (gbs) published a new magazine that replaces the traditional gbs activity report. The first reactions to "bruno." have been extremely positive: "bruno. rocks!" - "Exciting, well presented, very informative!" - " "Quite impressive!"​

The new format is largely the work of gbs advisory board member Helmut Ortner, "one of Germany's leading media developers" who has devised concepts for over 100 newspapers and magazines, including "Focus", "Cicero", "Das Parlament", and "Frankfurter Rundschau". At the end of 2018, Helmut Ortner and the Frankfurt designer Rudolf Blazek produced the first model edition of "bruno." based on the previous activity report, which downright "swept the foundation board off its feet", as Herbert Steffen and Michael Schmidt-Salomon write in the foreword to the "bruno." first edition.

"bruno. is a hybrid: on the one hand an activity report of the foundation, on the other hand an inspiring public magazine that embraces the idea of Evolutionary Humanism," explains Helmut Ortner. "It reports on projects, activities and campaigns, shows people and their commitment, and aims to motivate people to support the gbs and its goals. bruno. is thus both an information and image carrier – and all of this in a graphically appealing form, enriched with many photos and illustrations by Wolfram P. Kastner, Jacques Tilly, and Gerhard Haderer, among others.

Last but not least, the magazine also illustrates what the Giordano Bruno Foundation has achieved in the last 15 years: without the gbs there would certainly be no Research Group on Worldviews in Germany (Forschungsgruppe Weltanschauungen Deutschland – fowid), no Humanist Press Service (Humanistischer Pressedienst – hpd), no Institute for Secular Law (Institut für Weltanschauungsrecht – ifw), no Central Council of Ex-Muslims, no Atheist Refugee Relief, no Evokids project. Former orphanage children, victims of abuse by church authorities, or humanist Islam critics such as Mina Ahadi or Hamed Abdel-Samad would have received less support. The Great Ape Project (GAP) would not have been revived. There would have been much less education about human rights, the open society or the need for a rational, evidence-based reasoning, as well as less resistance to the "Law on the Criminality of Commercial Promotion of Suicide", religious discrimination in the workplace, genital mutilation, and much more.

"Reading pleasure with insight value"

The layout of the first issue of the new gbs annual magazine was designed by Roland Dahm, a graphic designer from Trier, who has designed numerous gbs brochures and posters in the past. Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Elke Held, Helmut Fink, and Florian Chefai were in charge of editing the magazine. Henrich Druck + Medien GmbH is responsible for the high-quality printing of the magazine. Even media professional Ortner is impressed by the result: "bruno. is of high quality, but not luxurious, intelligent, but not intellectual, visually modern, but not in a spirit of the times, in short: a 'newspaper kiosk ready' magazine. Reading pleasure with insight value – a magazine cannot offer more than that."

The bruno. annual magazine has been sent to over 4000 addresses in the last few days. "In order to avoid a high reflux quota, we focused primarily on those members of the support members who have made donations in the last two years or who were only recently admitted to the support member body as their addresses are most likely up to date," explains gbs business manager Elke Held. "However, we want to give all sponsoring members and other interested parties the opportunity to order the bruno. print version. In addition, the digital issue of the annual magazine can be downloaded as a pdf file from the gbs website. All this is completely free of charge for the readers – nevertheless we would be pleased about donations or endowments, since we can extend only then the foundation's range of action."

Further links to this message:

• Web form for ordering the print version of the gbs annual magazine free of charge (interested parties from Switzerland can receive the magazine from our cooperation partners, the Schweizer Freidenker.)
• Download link for the digital issue of the bruno. annual magazine (pdf-file)