This post comes from the heart. If you are at all interested in print, independent magazines or free bloody speech then you need to subscribe to this service; it has, quite frankly, changed my life.*
The concept of Stack is to promote independent press by sending subscribers one (or quite often several) independent rags a month. This can range from Eye (RRP £17!) to Little White Lies, Bad Idea, VNA, Anorak, the list is endless. If you’ve heard of these then you’ll know what a good deal this is, if you haven’t then you, child, are the most in need of it.
Strangely though, for me at least, it’s the other ‘free’ magazines you get with the featured title that make it all worthwhile. One example is Manzine, an outspoken reaction to mens magazines written by some of their editors. Reading-on-the-bus-kudos aside, it has helped to reinforce my confidence in the power of a print mag, however home-made - No-one else will own my copy of Manzine, I’ve spilt coffee on it and dog-eared the corners, it’s truly been a journey. I still pick it up months later and it’s as ball-splittingly hilarious as it was the day I got it.
I can’t recommend Stack enough, it’s a bundle of joy landing on your doormat every month, a constant in a world of wars, politics, doom, gloom and digital media. Plus they delivered issue one of our magazine last month, getting them a gold star in my book.
Jonny
*well maybe not changed my life but it’s definitely been the best £40 I’ve spent this year
Can it be true that I hold in my mortal hand an issue of purest AMMO?* With issue three, the cutest little inspiration mag in the planet brings us words and pics from Peskimo, Jam Factory and a favourite of ours Jessica Hische (cue glow of envy due to epic typo-crush) as well as loads of others. You can fit this baby in your back pocket but it’s jam-packed with artists that will make you quiver (ie. Pat Perry - never heard of him before but my is he good…) and is well worth picking up from the AMMO store.
*You’ll be pleased to know that our propensity to shoehorn content into barely-relevant quotes is as yet unabated.
Ashwin is a London-based designer with a very nice collection of work in his portfolio including this poster called ‘The Bare Essentials’. Often a self-congratulatory ‘design about design’ concept combined with the student classic ‘poster over face’ pose will bring me out in a rash but this piece overcomes that by being really rather pretty with some intricate use of colour (The clock has a red second hand for example). You can buy it an’ all.
The day has finally arrived when we can announce our print mag - 64 pages of B5 glory wrapped in an Eboy original limited-edition-for-this-magazine-only illustration which also extends onto a B3 poster (included for free, naturally) all for £2.50. It’s taken tiiime to get to this stage and we’re über-excited to bring this beast to life.
The launch party is being held at our stand at the D&AD New Blood fair at the Truman Brewery on the 26th of this month (Saturday innit) - get there for 5.30 to ensure you get some of the booze. At 7 we will then trundle of for a curry and a serious pub sesh.
If you’re keen, check our facebook event here - If you can’t make it do not fear, there will be plenty left to pick up a copy at your leisure from our shop or from various other outlets. If you sign up to Stack by the end of the month you even get it for free!
Some of the topics covered:
Cake, ITV’s Gladiators, paid placements, Eboy, Glug, Moustaches, Haikus, “Industry-ready?”, Adrian Shaughnessy on lobsters in shoes, rickshaws, nudity, FFFFUUUU, Are D&AD any good at pool?, creative tics, idea vs execution, mums on Facebook and much much more. We’re so proud of it, we put our name on it.
Some of you may remember our post on the winner of last years Rooted exhibition, ‘Skeletor the Cutlery Skeleton’. Well now the guys that run the event have created their first publication (see above for the page featuring our plastic friend). We were honoured to be asked to judge the event and are even prouder (like leave-it-lying-around-so-people-see kind of proud) to be in the book too.
Along with Skeletor there are some fantastic pieces displayed within a sleek 70 page tome and they are selling out fast - at £10 (a snip) it’s well worth picking up this limited edition bit of ephemera, no doubt featuring the early work of some of the future masters of the design world.
Been meaning to post this stuff for ages - busy times (the freaking print mag/New Blood prep) have led to somewhat of a backlog in ye ould inbox - Better late than never.
The last couple of years have seen a spate of collage-based illustration, lo-fi is very much in. However, the fact that you can’t move on ffffound for lazy ’shapes-with-bits-of-space-in-them’ knock-offs doesn’t mean there isn’t still some interesting work going on. Stone and Spear (AKA Simon Peter Frank Cook, Nottingham-based designer/Illustrator) is producing a little chunk of it in fact - utilising negative space, composition and cut-outs of wrestlers rather better than most.
The Revolution has begun. Rebel Radio - Originally a call-to-arms for Che Guevara’s Cuban Militia, now a beautiful A2 Poster available to you! Get it here and read the full post here.
Mercy, a forward-thinking London/Scouse design and creative agency, has started a project this year to release an E-Zine every month along the theme of the classic 1957 film 12 Angry Men. Issue 2 (based on the central character McArdle, for those interested) features such heavyweights as illustrator Si Scott and Megapoet Luke Wright (read his contribution here) - definitely something to keep up-to-date with, especially if they keep pulling names like these out of the bag.
ps. on the subject of Mercy, keep eyes peeled for their other stuff and events.
Craig and his team of vis/ressers have gone and done it again, made an awesome little publication that showcases the best in upcoming talent. If you haven’t got one, I strongly recommend you go and buy one right now, they won’t be around for long, and they will form a nice collection when future issues come out.
The second prize haul for Tuesday’s NOW SOLD OUT VS event is a couple of brilliant limited edition prints from Student Designer, ShellsuitZombie contributor and irritatingly talented Midlander [Stoke, bleugh] Andy Cooke. I warn you, I will personally be fighting tooth and nail for one of these bad boys, so bring your A game dickheads (nothing personal). If you want to jump the gun and snaffle one up right now, go to his shop here.
Still more to come you beautiful people (I’m feeling a bit bad about saying the dickheads thing now)
Nick had one of those ideas that everyone wishes they had had themselves - and boy has he run with it. Some elegant sculpture here that makes me - not inherently an ‘OMG-I-JUST-GOTTA-BUY-THIS-LAMP’ kind of person - want to buy ten of them, have them all face into a white wall (that I currently don’t own) and pretend my room is like the one in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’ (those pesky monkeys!).
The only thing more impressive is the list of blogs he’s been featured on, a list that doesn’t include us. So I apologise if everyone’s seen this stuff a million times on fffffffound and other ‘user-curated-image-bookmarking-sites‘ [said in a robot voice] but sod it, it’s pretty and we like.
From right, Michael C Place, Joe Shouldice, Ollie Johns, Paula Scher, Andy Altmann, Gary Fernandez
Ollie Johns
Paula Scher
Anthony Dickens
These delightful little creatures (just a few of 30) have been decorated by various famous designers and are being auctioned off on the 14th of this month at Glug - the big old monthly design knees-up in the east end. All proceeds go to DAHRA - Designers Against Human Rights Abuse, so the cause is very worthy, but to be honest I would (and probably will) throw money at it just because they’re so darn cool (shotgun the Ollie Johns one). Check out more on the project on the DAHRA site and buy Glug tickets here.
Honest to god, if I could post every image on this guys website on here I would. I mean, technically I could do that but I’d rather spend that time persuading you to look at the site itself. Editorial design rarely gets classier than this.
£2.50 for 64 pages, an Eboy cover and fold-out poster, articles by creative types including Adrian Shaughnessy, Sanky, D&AD, Glug, Eboy etc. Want it? Buy it here.
The Revolution has begun. Rebel Radio - Originally a call-to-arms for Che Guevara’s Cuban Militia, now a beautiful A2 Poster available to you! Get it here and read the full post here.
OK so recently we held a couple of events. If you were at one of them, go tag yourself on our facebook page. Or just go and stalk if you weren’t. (If this is you, hi Noel)
I’m confident that being young, fresh, beautiful people, you will have all heard of Spotify. We’ve started a collaborative playlist for you all to add to with tunes you love. Click here to add the playlist to your Spotify then add one song that you love. Try and make it something we might not have heard before. Tune.
