All posts filed under: Reads

Say Hello to Boom Saloon

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Having freelanced quite a bit in the wonderful magic world of indie magazines, keeping ad-free photography and adventure magazine Wildland Mag afloat, I was genuinely excited when I was let in on a new project idea. About a year ago, I met (then) twitter acquaintance Rachel Arthur for a chat and it felt like two magazine minds instantly clicked. We talked about the way media, journalism and the publishing industry shifted in the past years, old powerhouses falling by the wayside and how indie magazines have taken over bigger and bigger chunks of traditional readerships with exciting new content and financing models. And so we spoke about boom saloon, a new adventure she was scheming with friend and designer Jamie Smail.  At its core sits a beautifully printed magazine full of inspiring stories by a collective of international contributors, seeking to spur a movement, a wave to democratise creativity for good. As part of every issue, boom saloon selects a social project to support and champion creativity in underprivileged areas. It’s about taking young creatives by the hand, nurturing their raw talent …

On The Bookshelf: Made For Skate

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Rowley XLT, Koston 4, TNT, Chief, Reynolds 3, DVS CT, the list goes on and on. Well, what probably sounds like a lot of gibberish to some is only a small fraction of the compadres that kept my feet safe day in day out on my trips down the city streets and to the local park, joined me jumping down stairs and handrails or enduring pool and miniramp sessions since I started skateboarding back in ‘01. It’s hard to describe why I still remember this so vividly, but let’s put it this way: My weapons of choice – the piles of broken wood and the mass of shredded footwear – had as much of a story to tell as it might’ve been this soft toy from your early childhood, the first football jersey that made its way under the Christmas tree or even the first band shirt you bought ages ago. There is an emotional value, a form of identification and dissociation that so often goes without saying. ‘The worn down soles, the frazzled laces. You made …

On The Bookshelf: The Boy Who Made Faces

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Probably every kid I grew up with has encountered, loved and dreaded the pretty dark and subtly evil stories by Wilhelm Busch. Does Struwwelpeter or Max and Moritz ring a bell? Well then you might see the connection here. At least for me, Marco Bevilacqua‘s little booklet The Boy Who Made Faces brilliantly catapults me back into this chapter of my childhood. Under his alias of Want Some Studio, the Edinburgh-based designer and illustrator creates artworks that fuse traditional hand crafted and digital processes, taking influences from street and pop art. The 70 page volume The Boy Who Made Faces contains 13 shrewd illustrated poems filled with heaps of black humour and reflections on the multi-media culture and shifting society we live in. Just take The Boy Who Ate Himself, The Mean Bean or Freddy and his Finger: Wilhelm Busch would’ve been proud for sure. Have a look at these fab teasers below: Check out more of Marco’s illustrations & get in touch on social media! Want Some Studio Twitter Instagram

On The Bookshelf: The Eighty-Eight Volume 2

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It’s been a while since I last introduced an exciting new magazine to the blogosphere, so here’s the newest addition to my mag stand. The Eighty-Eight  proudly refers to itself as the ‘adventurous magazine for the occasional thinker’, featuring essays, stories and pictures, girdled by engaging, playful designs and illustrations. Created by curator and jazz musician Jamie Cullum, editor Anna-Marie Crowhurst and art director Kate Monument, Volume #2 is jam-packed with great and unusual stories, quirky illustrations and cheeky commentaries you won’t easily find elsewhere. What about finding the true origin of Come on Eileen, taking a dip into the dark and dirty history of flamenco or rummaging a whole mini zine dedicated to Donuts? Exactly. And because I can’t feature all of the goodies, here are my 3 fav picks from the issue! Isobel Diamond & John Hooper: Kerala by Rail Some time ago, photographer John Hooper and writer Isobel Diamond set off to travel the vastness of the Indian land & chose the most common means of transport: On one of the 11.000 trains traversing the 71.000 miles of track. This amazing …

On The Bookshelf: Our Time by Cat Garcia

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‘The underpinnings of genius are always invisible: no matter how hard you look, you can never see the strings.’ This sentence instantly caught my eye when I flicked through the intro of ‘Our Time’ and is probably one of the most canny and truthful statements about perceiving and valuing creativity I’ve read in a long time. London-based photographer Cat Garcia released this heavy bible of creative inspiration already a year ago and after vanishing entirely from my mind, I couldn’t be happier that my better half remembered and caught me unaware with it for my last birthday! And even though I’ve only finished reading through maybe 50% of its content, it’s due time to feature this beautiful thing on my bookshelf. For ‘Our Time’, Garcia set out to portray Britain’s 60 most creative people over the course of one year, following them into their homes and studios, observing their daily work routine, the process of designing and crafting, then again encountering and carving out the human being itself, detached from the artist’s persona. Printed on tactile, uncoated paper, her wonderful, classy and predominantly b/w photographs …

On The Bookshelf: ‘Photographer Writer Illustrator’ by Miniclick

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I love magazines. And photography. And especially if both are refreshing and doing things slightly different than the average publication. So when I first read about ‘Photographer Writer Illustrator’, with a broad smirk on my face, I had to think back to my early childhood and a playful writing, saying or drawing game we called ‘Stille Post’ or ‘Chinese whispers’. Like in the early surrealist tradition of ‘cadavre exquis’, each kid added something to the composition by scribbling or painting something on paper, allowed to see only what the previous person has come up with.   Back in the here and now, yet with the same childish delight and curiosity I eagerly awaited, unwrapped and came to love that small delivery Miniclick recently sent up North. Formed in Brighton around 2010, the lovely photography collective has made its mark with free talks, discussions, workshops and exhibitions in a growing but still tangible local scene of like-minded people in recent years. And of course the creative team around founder Jim Stephenson yet got another ace up their sleeves: …

Cover © Maud Chalard

On The Bookshelf: The Quarterly Magazine Issue #2

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Inevitably, you stumble across them, whether covering a whole page or squeezed into its very last corner. For many of us, adverts are inseparably entangled with our favourite magazines. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not only an admirer of the written word, exciting stories and compelling photography, but equally digging clever adverts. It’s just about keeping a balance. Well, if I’m flicking through the pages of most lifestyle, fashion or culture-related mags, all you basically do is jumping from one random perfume, clothing or technology ad to another. The actual articles quite often wither into mere fill-in amongst the crowd. To me, something’s wrong here. Annoyingly wrong. People (supposedly) buy magazines for content in the first place, right? At least I do. So where’s the value and appreciation for the creatives behind it – writers, editors and photographers – if the focus is constantly distracted from the real deal? The photographic print journal The Quarterly however proves that things can be done quite differently, devoted to an ethical, art-valuing and ad-free concept. Well, let’s step back and get to the bottom of it. …