What’s Up #34: Ludovic Balland
Ludovic Balland’s foliosite [ludovic-balland.ch] is almost, completely monochrome which highlights how bold his studio’s typographic vision is. To achieve this they’re not only manipulating existing typefaces in new and exciting ways but also creating new typefaces from old (or from scratch). If you are looking for a sample of his studio’s more exciting work, seek out the compendium they produced for the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art [bb5.berlinbiennial.de] entitled ‘When Things Cast No Shadow’ [jrp-ringier.com], where a crazy cast of typefaces that should be jostling for attention are roped into order with surprising results.
As a sidenote jrp | ringer are also the publishing house behind Ezra Petronio and Suzanne Koller’s forthcoming (and rather expensive) monograph [jrp-ringier.com]. You may know them better as Work In Progress [petronioassociatesblog.com].
in Graphic Design / Publications / Typography / What's Up
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The POD Report
Weather and blogging. It’s funny how page views from different countries go up and down depending on whether it’s summer or winter. It happens with blog posts too and it’s the primary reason why I’ve been meaning to post this for a while but haven’t got round to it until now (sorry).
Firstly, it you are interested in POD (Print-on-Demand) [wikipedia] productions at all – and, in terms of minimising the effect print production has on our environment, it’s something we should all be interested in – you should head over to Andrew Losowsky’s Magtastic Blogsplosion [losowsky.com/magtastic]. Andrew welcomes another POD provider into the fold, MagCloud [magcloud.com].
MagCloud is worth noting because, as Andrew points out, a) they talk exclusively about magazines and b) Hewlett Packard are behind this one, so there’s the hint that printer manufacturers are taking POD seriously indeed. What I found particularly interesting is that Andrew highlights the fact that POD services are too often pitched at hobbyists. While it seems perfectly fine to be producing magazines about your dog or your cousin’s wedding for a select group of friends and kinfolk (who you would probably end up buying copies for on their behalf anyway), it also dilutes the real benefits of POD production could provide to larger commercial entities such as newsstand titles or those simply wishing to reach a boarder international audience.
Essentially, someone needs to work out a way, to use one of those nifty internet terminologies, to further ‘monetise’ POD publications. To make them more commercially viable (ie cheaper and easier to distribute). MagCloud is a tiny glimmer of hope that this might be possible, but without mixing up the amateurs and the professionals it’s not far enough removed from yer lulus [lulu.com] and yer bobbooks [bobbooks.co.uk] to make any real progress. (As a sidenote, why do POD providers never have a ‘design’ category in their topic lists and should we be worried about it’s exclusion (when Art & Photography gets a look-in almost everytime)? I’m guessing the answer has to be ‘yes’.)
I recently received an invitation to contribute to a magazine on Issuu [issuu.com], a site Andrew mentions in the same article. Although, I personally find the navigation a little convoluted, especially when trying to decide wether to ‘bookmark’ or ‘follow’ a particular edition or user, Issuu should be of interest to POD providers because it unwittingly shows them a new format for distribution that is lively and exciting and manages to swerve past many of the pitfalls of ‘vanity publishing’ [wikipedia] (’Vanity publishing’ refers to publications produced at the expense of the author but has, in recent times, also been used to refer to POD authors, although with POD, these authors only incur costs of they purchase the books themselves).
Which brings me neatly round to a brief update on Press Publish’s (the boicozine mothership) very own publishing projects and where they’re at [presspublish.info].
mm (millimetre) We’ve been planning our next POD publication for some time now. mm (millimetre) magazine happily provoked quite a bit of interest when we originally announced the project. Unfortunately, it’s still on hold until your humble author (ie Me) finds the time and the appropriate POD producer to hook up with to the help produce the publication on a regular basis. The original thought was to use a number of POD producers to expand the magazines coverage, although they would each have their own formats so the magazine would need to be reformatted each time or produced in a way them was applicable to each one. See, tricky, huh. So that may still happen although we’re personally holding out to see if MagCloud is any good. More news as it comes to hand.
Estates of London Hopefully the next project to roll off the ‘presses’ (can you say that with POD?) will be the Estates of London project which we’re hoping to produce via Blurb [blurb.com] (who are currently holding a POD photographic book competition worth checking out).
Estates of London will be a visual survey of post-war housing estate architecture in London. Something we feel has been neglected for years and yet have had a massive impact on the fabric of modern Britain. There will be more about this project here and over on our Flickr site in the coming weeks. If you are interested in helping out with this project we’d love to hear from you. Email [michael at presspublish.info].
Anomalies The main problem/joy with Press Publish is that we have sooo many ideas that it’s tricky to keep them all moving at once. Along with boicozine, mm and Estates, there is also the boicoshop which is coming together nicely (more product to come!) and a follow up to Zine #1 [shop.boico.net], documenting more posts from the boicozine blog.
It’s for this reason too that Press Publish is looking for a business partner to help get things moving. It’s grass roots stuff so previous experience isn’t necessarily required but if you do have experience in the publishing field we’d love to hear from you. Again email Email [michael at presspublish.info] for further information.
So Yesterday This Happened
Part of the perils of being an avid magazine collector. Can anyone recommend a decent free standing shelving unit? This so isn’t the one.
100 Things: #001
Self Service’s 100 Things
As an ode to Self Service [selfservicemagazine.com] magazine’s ‘100 Things’ series of features (sadly discontinued) we’re going to attempt our own list of 100 things (in 100 posts). That should keep us busy, huh. The first of our ‘things’ has to be the aforementioned ‘100 Things’ series and to kick it off here’s a few spreads to feast yer eyeballs on (click on an image to see if larger). Design & direction by Petronio Associates (formely Work in Progress) [petronioassociates.com]. More ‘things’ to come… 1 down, 99 to go.
What’s Up #30: peter&wendy
Peter&Wendy are a Parisian design agency [peter-wendy.com] actually run by Xavier and Cécilia. They have just completed the design and direction of the inaugural issue of UK-based high-minded culture mag, Bedeutung [bedeutung.co.uk]. The cover does away with any sort of formal masthead, replacing it with a big red square. Pretty daring. You might be interested in the Grotesque poster that they have for sale at the moment too. Mmm…metallics.
Mags and Stuff
I stuck this latest ’stuff’ picture on Flickr a couple of days ago so it was ready to link to this post. It’s got 24 hits already… okay, so that’s not a lot but the same image of some rather attractive perspex rods in a window in Brighton went up at the same time and only three people have looked at them. That’s… some large percentage less than the other picture. Anyhoo, from this I have concluded that pictures of stuff are dead popular. This one’s going to run and run…
This weeks stuff includes a whole bunch of free magazines. To any dedicated magalophile a carefully crafted and well designed free magazine is like a little piece of christmas has been clipped off the end of the year and fallen down the calendar. You’ll find quality free publications in most cities these days. London has a few that you’ll find around the traps. These are Boicozine’s current faves…
Loud & Quiet [loudandquiet.com] has grown from A5 to A4 with some rather fetching new uncoated stock (that’s non-shiny paper to the uninitiated). Downside is, it feels more lightweight now. Upside is that is looks well classy. ¶ Art & Music is pretty decent [artandmusicmagazine.com], if very calm looking magazine, with some cracking articles and a refreshing editorial tone. ¶ Fun looks proper ‘expensive art paper’ with it’s special colours and fold-out poster format but then it features commentary on stuff like dogging! Blimey, didn’t see that one coming! It’s all in good, er… fun though, and gets away with being cheeky and cheery enough to make you care. Nice one Fun [greatenjoyment.com]. ¶ Ello, it’s Monocle again [monocle.com]. Could help meself. It’s their best cities issue with their first Design Directory supplement and a spiffy cover designed by Ken Leung and James Melaugh [dontyouthink.co.uk]. Nice work if you can get it, I say. ¶ Red sunglasses. Not posh, just red. If they’re red, you don’t need posh, do you. It’s enough that they’re red. I’ll be wearing these a lot I think (even though I can’t see a bloody thing through them). ¶ Black Skull Candy. Skulls are a bit popular aren’t they? Do you think it’s because we’ve all got one? This one contains Extra Salty Salmiakpulver and seems to be wearing chips style sunglasses. Probably from Cybercandy [cybercandy.co.uk]. ¶ Dazed & Confused [dazeddigital.com] has a new Art Director and this time it’s someone who actually likes typography (which is lucky cause being a magazine, it’s chock full of the stuff), Rémi Paringaux. No longer do I feel alienated by their uncaring and unthoughtful misuse of dodgy typefaces. I’ve bought the last two issues now, the first for a long long time. Now the UK edition can give their Japanese sibling a run for it’s money.
That’s it fer now. More pictures of stuff soon, I promise. They’re dead popular, yknow.
AR @ NBD is A-OK!
I’m currently on assignment at Nick Bell Design [nickbelldesign.co.uk] where Mr Bell has the most awesome collection of The Architectural Review [arplus.com] magazines I’ve ever seen. They stretch as far back as the late 50s and were inherited by Nick from an architect looking to rehouse his collection. I took the opportunity to photograph a handful of covers which you can see over on [flickr]. Enjoy.
Time Keeps On Slipping Into The Future
Have you ever tried to pinpoint the exact time when you decided you wanted to be a designer, illustrator, blog host or whatever? You you ask me I’ll always cite i-D’s Heroes & Sheroes issue from 1989 [i-dmagazine.com/63] as the main reason I wanted to become a Graphic Designer. Under Terry Jones [wikipedia.org] direction, Stephen Male created a joyous riot of colour, imagery and ideas. Much of the graphic techniques employed came about from messing around in the tactile world of graphic reproduction, pre-computers. A mere two or three years later and everything had changed with the rise of the Apple Mac (I touched on this briefly in the Colophon2007 compendium, ‘We Love Magazines’ [gestalten.com]). It was during this period in time that I was studying Graphic Design at university and one of the first books I remember buying and making my own mini bible was Terry Jones‘ book ‘Instant Design: A Manual of Graphic Techniques’ [flickr], the back cover of which you can see above.
Inside Mr Jones outlined the many visual effects you could achieve with relatively little equipment and a whole lotta pace. These included using handmarks, stencils, typewriters, photocopiers, collage (or ‘montage‘ as he preferred to call it), polaroids and video. I remember finding photocopiers particularly intriguing (in a design sense, I wasn’t some wierdo photocopier fancier. Promise.) and experimented loads with cutting and pasting blown up typefaces all over the place (sometimes tracing and redrawing them with technical pens to get cleaner lines). Results were relatively instantaneous, but most importantly it was really fun.
Unfortunately my book got damaged by a pesky housemate towards the end of my studies when rain came in through an open window and we have remained apart even since, apart from a brief flirtation (with said book, not the housemate) a year or so ago at the Dover Street Market [doverstreetmarket.com] where expense dictated browsing to be the order of the day… until now. I found a copy in Brighton this weekend and we are now reunited. I want to share Mr Jones’ thought on time with you, dear friends. This text is taken from the back page of said book and goes some way to explain why he thought it’s good to consider design as being ‘instant’ in the first place…
“Time is our most precious commodity. I believe you can only live for the moment, learn from the past and work for the future. Time influences the human state of mind; friend or enemy, we make time or we lose it. Our lives are measured by it and history makes us feel guilty when we waste it…. Clocks are monuments to the world’s greatest commodity… Human preoccupation with time stops when we die and one of the greatest epitaphs, ‘I made the time’, is inscribed on the tombstone of the British painter Stanley Spencer… as Manley Buchanan said… ‘Time is running and passing and running so you better all get it right this time cos’ there might not be a next time’.
Side Notes: Steven Heller is a fan of i-D [aiga.org/defining-style-making-i-d]
A very brief interview for Eye Magazine [eyemagazine.com]
in Colophon2007 / Graphic Design / Ideas / Modern Relics / Publications
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Stuff of the Week
The ‘Good Week for Stuff’ post seemed so popular I thought I’d do it again — I feel an irregular format of blog posts coming on… The first edition of Agency YCN’s new newsletter popped through the letterbox today [agencyycn.com]. It’s a fun and informative affair with high quality design work courtesy of Mr David Lane [davidlaneuk.net]. The pull out ‘artcards’ are a neat idea too. We like David’s suggested redesign for Grafik magazine too (see the PDF on his website) ¶ When Boicozine needs a sugar fix we (well, me) often find ourselves reaching for the Chelsea Yogurt Scotch [meiji.co.jp/chelsea]. The coffee and tea versions are a little rich but, bizarrely their butter scotch version is quite good. ¶ Avid readers will know about our (well, just me really… again) fascination with macarons, particularly proper french ones. Legendary purveyor of lush macarons, Ladurée [laduree.fr] produce limited edition boxes to put them in that look as confectous, and totally collectable, as the macarons themselves. ¶ If yer in London town, have a nose around the art shops cause there’s a special offer on packs of Sharpies [sharpie.com] on the moment. It’s the first set of textas… sorry, felt-tips… I’ve had in ages. If you’re in Cowling & Wilcox, check out their Alien Art Concept range of Spray Paints. Current fave is light yellow [mtncolors.com]. ¶ A new issue of colossal (512 pages, count ‘em) art mag Uovo [uovo.tv] is out, again art directed (as usual) with utmost finesse by Boletsferñando [boletsfernando.org] ¶ Finally managed to get me mitts on a copy of Case da Abitare [atcasa.corriere.it/casedaabitare], recently redesigned by Winkreative [see magculture]. The actual design of the magazine has definitely improved (even if it borrows a little too heavily from magazine design of the late 60s and early 70s, with it’s fashionably rigid grid system), the editorial just seems a little lack lustre now. Hopefully it’ll even out once the dust has settled.
Fashopolitico
Fashion and Politics, they don’t sit amazingly well together and yet there seems to be a recent trend towards mashing them up to create new angles on the age-old subjects. The most talked about at the moment has to be Esquire magazine’s (U.K. edition – website coming soon) recent 75th anniversary event where they revisited a number of classic covers from the 50s, 60s and 70s, replacing existing imagery with photographs of various fashion designers [via magculture]. All the chosen covers were originally art directed by George Lois [georgelois.com] who took a distinctly concept driven (almost ‘advertising-y’) approach to each cover. They were often overtly political too. Something that would be considered death at the newsstand by many men’s magazines today. The end result of Esquire’s new cover versions is that you begin to question the political relevence of modern fashion designers. Vivienne Westwood and Christopher Bailey’s images seem to be a snug fit although Donatella Versace & John Galliano’s logic seems fundamentally flawed when posed next to Muhammad Ali & Roy Cohn’s worthy illustrations (As a sidenote, Wired seems to have picked by the ‘topical’ baton with their ‘Screw the spotted owl’ cover for their June issue [wired.com/16-06]. It’s nice to see a revival in controversy being used to sell a ‘mainstream’ magazine, and I’m not talking about some selleb’s ‘amazing’ weight gain/loss story). SHOWstudio have also been giving Fashion & Politics a shove with a ongoing series of ‘Political Fashion’ pieces that are worth having a rummage through [showstudio.com/politicalfashion].
