Seven Hundred Penguins
A little while back the Penguin marketing department had it’s first dalliance with Flickr. I was geekily excited to see they had joined the Penguin Paperback Spotters’ Guild Flickr Group. In January they posted a request for favourite Penguin covers under the banner ‘Penguin700′ [flickr.com/penguinpaperbackspotters]. The response was unfortunately slightly lack lustre but that hasn’t stopped Penguin going ahead releasing their random selection of the ace Penguin book covers throughout the ages called ‘Seven Hundred Penguins’ [penguin.co.uk/penguin700]. It’s out in September. Expect to see more about this around the traps in the coming weeks. Below is one of my fave covers that I’ll be rooting for to see on display in said book.
What’s Up #13: Adrian Fleet
Adrian [adrianfleet.com] has only been out of Uni for just over a year but has already clocked up commissions for The Guardian, The Illustrated Ape [theillustratedape.com] and Bad Idea [badidea.co.uk] as well as creating a whole host of crazy creatures for Plan B’s music reviews section [planbmag.com]. The picture below illustrates a reissue of The Pop Group’s album ‘Y’ [wikipedia].
What’s Up #12: Silas and Maria
Just in case you were wondering what Silas and Maria [silasandmaria.com] were up to on their recent sabbatical in Japan here’s a few pics of their recent range that, for the first time, was not available outside Asia. Meanwhile Russell, the big man at Silas, has tag teamed with James Jarvis [studiojarvis.com] on the expension of the Amos Toys brand [amostoys.com], with Tshirts, zines, a blog [amostoys.blogspot.com] and new characters to come. Much of this Amos newness is also exclusive to Japan but (touch wood) it looks like that’s just a temporary arrangement. Phew! Silas illustrator Will Sweeney [bigactive.com/will-sweeney] has recently produced a new print for the Medicom Life Entertainment range too, it’s called ‘Jungle Hop’ and you can see it here [medicomtoy.co.jp/life].
What’s Up #11: Human Empire
Human Empire [humanempire.com] is a design and illustration bureau consisting of members, Jan Kruse and Malte Kaune, broadcasting their creative talents out of Hamburg to everywhere. Largely know for their collaborative work with the Moor Music [morrmusic.com] record label, they are big into selling stuff in shops and are opening a new store in Hamburg this week. Of course, if you can’t make it to Hamburg there’s always the online store [humanempire.com/shop] with loads of goodies including collaborations with various other creative types such as illustrator Arne Bellstorf [bellstorf.com] and Andreas Samuelsson [andreassamuelsson.com].
Paris Reading List
Having fully blown magazitis means the first thing you have to do when visiting a new city is seek out the city’s finest purveyor of magazines in order to get your fix. I had a few leads in Paris. OFR [ofrpublications.com] has always been a place for mag worship although the quality and regularity of their titles has been somewhat lacking since they decided to focus on vintage clothing. Palais de Tokyo [palaisdetokyo.com] is a great place to visit and has a fab bookstore, they have also started publishing their own magazine which I’ll talk about below. Colette [colette.fr] was pretty darn awesome for mag shopping this time around. I managed to pick up a Japanese version of Tokion, a catalogue of the recent PMKFA [pmkfa.com] exhibition, ‘A Bag of Grease’, as well as a few other gems there too… Here’s a brief run down, ‘mag your way around Paris’ style…
032c [032c.com]
032c comes from one of my fave cities, Berlin, and makes an excellent travelling companion full of fun yet meaty articles for reading inbetween city hopping. With Issue 13, they have taken a new design direction which can only be described as ‘challenging’. Jeremy over at MagCulture discussed it in detail a little while back [magculture.com].
Tokion [tokion.jp]
Relax maybe be long gone now but the Japanese editions of Dazed and Tokion seem to be taking up the slack after it’s departure. Well, to these western eyes anyway. I’ve been itching to see a copy of Tokion since they took the plunge to create a unique version of the Japanese edition and so far it doesn’t disappoint with some snappy typography that enhances the already well established title.
Wallpaper [wallpaper.com]
It’s been all change at a couple of well known British titles this month. The former editor of Wallpaper has moved house to Esquire and given the mag a complete overhaul (it looks great, new size and all, but it wouldn’t have been had to improve upon it’s previous formulaic incarnation). The Editor’s position at Wallpaper has been filled by former creative lead, Tony Chambers. Therefore Wallpaper has a new creative lead and, this issue, a new look. I had to check it out. The new look is worth having a flick through at for sure. Nice choice of type.
Magazine
Wandering about Paris, you think the locals weren’t really bothered about magazines and magazine culture. Sure, there are a handful of decent newsagents (including an ancient-old WH Smiths), specialist mag stores and the newsstands are pretty neat but often few and far between. Then you stumble upon Magazine magazine, a magazine about magazines… natch! It’s a lush publication, which each issue designed by a different ‘cutting edge’ creative team. It’s free too, which is good because it’s also way hard to find. No website and only stocked in a few random stores around town, this mag was like golddust at Colophon2007 earlier this year and for good reason. Read an interview with the editor in the latest edition of Nico [nicomagazine.com].
Technikart / GoGo Paris Guide [gogoparis.com]
GoGo Paris used to be a magazine, then it became a website and then the magazine disappeared, which was a shame because it’s a near indispensable English language guide to all that’s hip to do and see in the capital. French entertainment mag, Technikart [technikart.com] have teamed up with GoGo for a one off guide to Summer in the City. It was like bumping onto an old friend in the street, seeing it back in print again… although they failed to mention that most of Paris shuts down throughout August, we did uncover a number of ace places to go or at least note down for next time.
Palais [palaismagazine.com]
I didn’t get the idea behind Palais magazine when I first saw it but now I’ve been to Palais de Tokyo to see one of the shows it talks about, it all makes sense now. Palais works as a new sort of exhibition catalogue. See the show, buy the mag. It’s kind of ace when you put the two together. It’s also a kind of interesting new avenue for consumer publishing too.
Zero Duex
This is free art mag I picked up at Palais de Tokyo and it’s ace. Everything in it is based around the letter ‘B’ and includes Bee Beards, a co-operative called Bank and their collection of amended press releases, pics of Blown Out windows, Bono singing at Balthus’s funeral and loads more. For an art magazine it’s rather jolly (apart from the funeral bit, obviously).
Fat Children Took My Life
As seen in the new Surface to Air [surface2air.com] store on Rue Charlot… the new 7inch single for Jarvis Cocker [myspace.com/jarvspace] takes the original cover from the album and messes about with the artwork, creating an allusion to the single title, Fat Children (it’s a top track too!) and a rather bloated version of our Jarv’ (although he’s part Frenchy these days, and all the better for it). Rather spiffy re-artworking by design stalwarts, The Designers Republic [thedesignersrepublic.com].
Modern Postcards: Paris #2
Modern Postcards: Paris #1
Reading Matters
Hand Job: A Catalog of Type
The Princeton Architectural Press [papress.com] have been making some interesting publishing choices of late, particularly those of the non-architectural kind. Hand Job is an investigation into hand-drawn typography and recent trends away from mechanical typesetting. If that sounds a bit dry the physical publication is anything but. What you get is a lovingly crafted catalogue of modern day illustrators happy to play with type. The book is curated by Michael Perry [midwestisbest.com], a Brooklyn based designer, and features the work of 55 different designers and illustrators, big and small such as Travis Stearns [iammintcondition.com], Adrian Johnson [adrianjohnson.co.uk], Matilda Tristram [lovelycat.co.uk], Adam Hayes [mrahayes.co.uk] and loads more. You can get your grubby mitts on a copy by visiting [papress.com/handjob] or your friendly neighbourhood design bookshop.
Nico
You may have noticed a shipment of bulky silver ‘book like’ magazines appearing in stores around London town. This is Nico magazine [nicomagazine.com] and is your first stop should you wish to catch up on this year’s Colophon2007 event, held in Luxembourg earlier this year. We’ve already talked about Colophon loads on Boicozine, mainly because we did a spot of ‘live blogging’ [see boicozine/colophon] from Colophon via MagCulture [magculture.com/blog], but this really is the definitive magazine companion to the event. There are interviews with most of the lead speakers by Andrew Losowsky, one of the event curators and it’s published by Mike Koedinger [mikekoedinger.com] whose team pull off the whole thing so seamlessly. That’s just a small part of this lush publication though, there’s loads more to check out and this is only issue one (which I guess means Mr Magazine [mrmagazine.wordpress.com] will be making sure he has his copy).
DIY Publishing Rules OK
After missing out on the V&A Village Fete [scarletprojects.com], I was determined not to miss out on the Publish and Be Damned Fair [publishandbedamned.org.uk]. The organisers are very strict about the nature of the exhibitors. For a start, they must be independent publishers displaying “individual and experimental approaches” to whatever publications they produce. They can’t be too big or flash a publisher (some possible exhibitors were told they were too well established to participate). They must also be able to fill a table full of interesting bits and bobs for people to have a flick or a rummage through. There were some lush publications available for free others ranged from a couple of pounds to 20 plus. This year’s exhibitors came from as far a field as Poland and Turkey. The event was held in one of the old school buildings at The Rochelle School, attached to The Boundry Estate (London’s oldest housing estate, fact fans [myspace.com/boundaryestate]) and managed to leak out into the central garden. The highlight for me, as always, was Mark Pawson’s [mpawson.demon.co.uk] stall with his vast array of Gocco [flickr.com/groups/gocco] prints, Issues of Craphound [zinewiki.com/craphound] and assorted sorties. Overall assessment… DIY Rules OK! Here’s a few pics from the event with a bit of commentary. I may have to break this into two parts…
I got a little over enthusiastic when a guy told me that I could just take a copy of Knight’s Move. He could have been hoping that if I take a copy I’d stop photographing his stall. I did both anyways. The byline reads ‘Writing as Drawing’.
Turps Banana [turpsbanana.com] was one of the more lushly produced publications on show. Designed by Geoff Moore at Studio Gpop [studio-gpop.com].
Fashionriot was one of the more expensive purchases at Publish and Be Damned but with good reason. Every page was a lovingly concocted mash of type, design and materials. Issue three featured a green grid with different stamps splashed over each cover.
Update: I’ve uploaded a bunch of pics over at [flickr].
