Stuff from Above: Thanks Côme!
Côme de Bouchony [comedebouchony.com] has helped launch the Boicozine cultural exchange programme by very kindly swapping a bunch of ace Ephemera from Paris with your humble author/blog enthusiast… actually there isn’t really any sort of official exchange thingy… I made that bit up. Sounds like kid of a neat idea though, huh.
From the top, clockwise: Côme’s business card × Social Club is a new… er… club for Paris [parissocialclub.com]. As reported in a recent issue of Grafik ’still no website’ Magazine [grafikmagazine.co.uk] Laurent Fetis [laurentfetis.com] has been changed with producing their flyer which is lush A3 size 12 page colour colour affair featuring contributions from Will Sweeney [alakazamlabel.com] and Gaspirator [myspace.com/gaspirator] × Magazine magazine is a magazine about magazines. It’s totally rad, near impossible to find outside of Paris and guest Art Directed by a different creative group each issue. For this edition the creative reigns were passed to Florence & Johann [florencejohann.com] × Côme may have to decipher this one for me. It looks like an ace two colour flyer announcing new publications by a publishing house but I’m not sure. The front image is a bit saucy isn’t it. × Programme produced for Tram [tram-idf.fr] which looks like some sort of Art Festival covering a number of areas and venues. Designed by a couple calling themselves Camping Design [campingdesign.com] × This is Sportswear is a ‘Icon Book Remix’ produced by Nike Sportwear for Clark magazine [clarkmagazine.com]. It’s one of a number of lush publications Nike have been producing in a push to reconnect with the creative community. Designed by ill-studio [ill-studio.com] × Lastly this is an ace little programme from this year’s Chaumont Poster and Graphic Design festival. Printed in metallic gold and reflex blue and designed by Frederic Teschner Studio [fredericteschner.com]
in Ephemera / Graphic Design / Things / Travelogue
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A Good Week for Stuff
It’s been a good week for stuff. I was going to do a ‘reading list’ [boicozine/reading-lists] but going through the little stacks of magazines piled up around the place I found I was still catching up with mags I was talking about way back like I.D. (not i-D), Dwell, Wired, Good… loads of American mags, which is a bit spooky. Our postbox, on the other hand, was looking a lot more interesting…
I love a magazine that messes with the format of magazines. A magazine that throws you curve balls in terms of pace and flow. Pin-up [pinupmagazine.org] is my fave architecture magazine at the moment for this reason. Issue 4 contains some pretty lush visuals too, including this rather fetching sunrise, as photographed by Ann Woo [annwoo.com] / My prediction over the next twelve months or so, is that we’ll start to see the more established and well regarded blogs venturing into tactile formats such as printed publications. Charlotte Cheetham’s Manystuff have jumped ahead of the pack with Manystuff #0 [manystuff.org], which runs with the copyline, ‘More Real Than Fiction’. Designed by the ever inventive Pierre Vanni [pierrevanni.com]. It features glossy full colour pages (definitely not POD, folks) and contributions from Mr Alex Bec [alexbec.com], Mark Kremers[tex-server.org] and Damien Poulain [damienpoulain.com] / Fever Zine [myspace.com/feverzine] is publishing in it’s purest and most joyful form. It is pure zine in all it’s black photocopied and pink covered glory. The low-fi format belies the high calibre talent behind the publication, edited by Alex Zamora and designed by boicozine contributor, Simon Whybray [simonwhybray.com] / A special thank you to the fine folks at The Future Laboratory [thefuturelaboratory.com] for my MystaBot [tomybots.de]. Now if only I could get it to do the dishes too / This week I was lucky enough to be part of a select few to make use of the Nike ID Studio [nikeid.nike.com] at the invitation of Mr Alex Bec who has completed work on Nike’s Art of Football [nike1-1.com] project on behalf of YCN [ycnonline.com] and ShowStudio [showstudio.com] (phew). I didn’t really cover a lot of the event on this here blog because of the scale and scope of the thing. It was massive. You can check out most of the fab Art of Football action on YCN’s Flickr page [flickr] / Jim Henson lives on in the rhelm of plastic collectables with these ‘City Critters’ [flickr]. The one I got looks surprisingly calm compared to the rest of them. I think it’s because it’s the only one without those crazy, googly, muppet eyes. / The Chap’s Mega Breakfast arrived in the post from Lo Recordings [lorecordings.com] with an ace cover image by Graham Harvey for Non Format [non-format.com] /
The blank CD is often sadly neglected by manufacturers as some where to splash a bit of design nouce about, unlike the blank cassette was in the past. 5 inch [5inch.com] recognised this fact a few years ago and have been producing dead brill CD designs to placate designers everywhere. Notebook is the boico house fave ’cause you can scribble all over them and they still look good.
Pawson at the Horse Hospital
Mark Pawson [mpawson.demon.co.uk] is having an exhibition at The Horse Hospital [thehorsehospital.com] in London (near Russel Square tube station). It’s only on until the 26th of this month so get along to take a rare peek into the obsessive compulsive world of this collector of modern ephemera and U.K. King of Gocco [flickr.com/inkdesigner]. There’s been a film night and you can hear Mr Pawson talk about his work today at 3pm.
Modern Relics: Young and Rich
Cover design for The Tubes‘ album ‘Young and Rich’ by band member, Prairie Prince [prairieprince.com]. Listen to some (only loosely recommended) vintage Tubes here [hushie.com]. A favourite of this man [nieves.ch].
Cole’s Old World
It’s amazing, sometimes, how hard it is to find information online about Australian cultural staples such as snippets from the vast body of work created by Alex Stitt [see boicozine/85]. Cultural relics, often referred to under the subject of ‘Australiana’, such as the Cole’s Funny Picture Book seem to only exist with the sheltered confines of their country of origin.
Cole’s Funny Picture Book is odd, which goes a long way to explain why it’s appeal was confined to it’s home country. It’s also ancient old. It’s origins go back as far as 1879 when one of Australia’s first major booksellers, Edward William Cole [wikipedia] pieced together the first edition from his home above his Cole’s Book Arcade in the centre of Melbourne. It soon became a popular publishing staple in the young city and has been revised and re-released several times over the years (at last count the book was up to it’s 71st edition and rising).
E.W. Cole (as he was credited) [arcadepublications.com] compiled these ‘Funny Picture Books’ in his spare time, often cutting and pasting content purloined from various other books, newspapers and magazines from around the world (copyright was seldom an issue for Cole being so far away from the ‘cultural capitals’ of the world at the time). Chapters were divided into ‘lands’ such as Girl Land, Boy Land, Temper Land, Greediness Land and Laziness Land and would often feature advertising for Cole’s Book Arcade as added promotion for his store. Racial stereotypes abounded under the niave notion that displaying as many over evolved characters as possible, united mankind under one banner although describing characters as ‘niggers’ or naming them things like ‘Little Chinky Chow-Chow’ seems pretty backwards these days.
Still, the Coles Funny Picture Book remains a cultural oddity from a country that likes to keep these sorts of things to itself. As a kid, I always thought the rainbow bursting out of it’s pitch black cover was the best thing about it. Maybe it was…
Modern Relics: i-D #14
in Ephemera / Graphic Design / Modern Relics / Publications
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