FAR back in history, in 2008, the scintillating design of a new flagship store or the It-bag backlit on a pedestal within it provided pulsequickening excitement.

Now the slick limestone-clad store that once got us so hot under the collar makes us anxious. The recession has thrown up different cultural tastes.

All of a sudden, London's small specialist bookshops, like Artwords at the Whitechapel Gallery, John Sandoe in Blacklands Terrace or Taschen at Duke of York's Square, have become vibrant attractions for a widening crowd of interesting people.

It's not just in these lovely bookshops that the atmosphere is becoming piping hot. There are many literary magazines dense with nourishing brain food: Granta, Tin House, the Paris Review, Poets & Writers, The London Review of Books, Smithsonian Magazine, The Believer -- it's a long list. But All-Story, a monthly magazine coming out of Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios in San Francisco, is special.

If you're like me, you love the fact that these periodicals exist, but rarely read more than one or two stories before being overwhelmed. There's too much to wade through and life is too short. All-Story is different because you don't have to read every word to get a major cultural transfusion. It explodes with visuals that are as vibrant and important as the stories themselves.

Guest designers have included Marjane Satrapi, Dennis Hopper, David Bowie, Zaha Hadid and Chip Kidd. You never know what you're going to get, but you do know it's likely to be incredible. The Winter 08 issue, designed by Lou Reed in landscape format, featured a whole series of experimental photographs that he took on his travels. The earlier Elizabeth Peyton issue has her drawings and paintings interspersed with rarely seen photographs of Bob Dylan from his own archives.

The magazine depends on subscriptions to survive -- there are barely any adverts. The writing is a seductive mix of big and breaking names: Margaret Atwood, Woody Allen, Rachel Cusk and David Mamet are interspersed with newcomers.

Editor Michael Ray, managing editor Krista Halverson and Coppola's founding co-editor Adrienne Brodeur are the team behind it. Coppola himself is often too busy with film projects to be too closely involved. But Coppola does brainstorm possible designers with his team, and if they are friends he might work closely with them on the layout, as he did on the Helmut Newton issue.

Contributing writers submit a oneyear film option and first serial rights along with their 7, 000-word story, so there's a possibility that it might be made into a film. "We try to publish stories with ambition and compelling ideas, stories that are provocative and important in some way," says Michael Ray. "And then, of course, each issue is designed in its entirety by a leading artist. The cumulative effect is that the magazine becomes a platform for artistic experimentation and collaboration."

A large online artistic community surrounds All-Story and its virtual studio. There are screen and fiction writing workshops (some free online, others fee-paying at Coppola's property in Belize). Regular readings from the magazine are performed by actors in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. The hub is in San Francisco, where they choose 24 from roughly 12, 000 stories and one-act plays submitted annually. "The magazine is headquartered on the third floor of the Sentinel Building, one of the few flatirons in San Francisco," says Krista Halverson. "We have a few small offices, including a reading room for our 10 amazing volunteers, who help us get through the hundreds of submissions we receive each week."

The current Latin American issue is designed by Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro, and edited by Diego Trelles Paz and Daniel Alarcon.

I showed my copy to the film director Don Boyd over supper, and he went very quiet, his hands handling the paper as if it were a religious artefact. Copies of this and many other issues, will be collectors' items. Watch out for the forthcoming issue designed by Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons. The stories in it are by Ha Jin, Pasha Malla, an unpublished early story by Kurt Vonnegut and lastly the story Coppola wrote as the basis for his latest film, Tetro.