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Print Is Not Dead


This evening I hopped on a train to Shoreditch and visited The Book Club where I attended I talk presented by Stack magazine distribution entitled "Printout! - Why print when you can blog?", the talk/discussion was given by...

Rob Orchard - Delayed Gratification

Tim Hayward - Fire & Knives

John L Walters - Eye Magazine

All three men are heads/editors of their respective independent magazines which they are all at different stages of starting up or doing business with. Each of the magazines, though similar in format all have completely different subject specialisms and with it, completely different approaches to the way they approach the running of their magazine. 

Rob Orchard with Delayed Gratification has coined the term 'slow journalism' to as a direct reaction to the internet generation of journalism where every story must be investigated, researched, written and published all within a matter of minutes. His magazine is a quarterly publication of exquisite journalism and beautiful infographics, a modern almanac. Other than a website DG has no online presence whatsoever, launched only last year it'll be interesting to see what happens to them. 

Tim Hayward with Fire & Knives has created the ultimate foodie magazine, based around his passion for food and journalism he gets people equally as passionate, interesting, literate as him to write his articles. By his own admission he is "basically printing a blog" taking talented writers who have not yet had much exposure and giving them the opportunity to have their work published for no fee which then leads to them having more work and the magazine gaining more exposure. They have a website and a twitter account which allowed them to get enough subscribers based on a mock-up issue to print their first issue and have gone on from there to bigger and better things. 

John L Walters from Eye Magazine, I don't really need to explain their ethos. If you read this blog chances are you'll read theirs too and maybe even their magazine and have a very clear idea about what they're all about. 

Despite their differences in topics, journalistic ethos and relationships with the internet each of the mags. and their directors/editors are passionate about publishing and printing. The magazines are their souls and it shows in printed form. When asked about 'the green issue' of the environmental cost of printing a magazine Tim summed it up nicely "No-one has ever thrown away a copy of our magazine" stating "We design a beautiful object as possible, it is not disposable media. People keep them. The first thing I see people do when they get the magazine is smell it, personally I think that is much better as a form of interactive media than facebook or twitter." All of the magazines tick those boxes. There was a small library of tonnes of independent magazines which we flicked through over a drink and were even given a couple of complimentary copies of Eye Magazine, Fire & Knives and Article (see the photo above). All of the magazines were beautiful, like popular magazines like 'OK' and 'Hello' they are printed media but overall they are in a world of their own. 

My copy of Fire & Knives is just amazing. Overall well worth the fiver entry I'd say. 
Chillin' with the guys below, John, Tim and Rob (right to left)....SWAG



Boy Can Sew






Spent all of yesterday fixing my slowing breaking laptop case with a scrap of leather I bought from a shop in Brick Lane about 2 years ago. Was really nice to make something with my hands for once and very satisfying to know I've fixed something myself and hopefully given it another couple of years of use. Looking forward to see how the leather ages and whether or not my stitching will hold up to me throwing my laptop + case in and out of my bag on a daily basis. I have always loved this laptop case since I got it almost 2 years ago now and always get compliments for it whenever I produce it from my bag. Now have a whole new level of love for it. 

If you're in the market for a new laptop case check out the company I got mine from. http://www.colcasac.com/

Stop the Violence




Now we all know the easiest way to a student's heart is free stuff. This coming post pretty much justifies the rather large amount of time I spend surfing teh internet and it's creative blogs looking for work that inspires and excites me. This is Colossal is one of those blogs, a personal favourite of mine and the other day as always I was reading through the newest posts and came across one about this rather neat looking book....


'Stop the Violence' is a collaboration between Thirst founder Rick Valicenti and Photographer Francois Robert and his series of the same name. Each spread of the book features  an individual letter from the alphabet—compositions made of human bones arranged by Robert—in juxtaposition with a page from President Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech from 2009. The book is 36 pages long and quite extraordinarily more than a foot in height. Everything seems pretty normal up to this point however when I came to the end of the post there was a link to a website where you could request a copy of this rather amazing book FOR FREE. Amazed, I clicked through the link and filled out the little form with my address etc and 10 minutes later got an e-mail saying that my copy would be shipped by the end of the week! Another 10 minutes later I tried to access the page again set up a link from this blog so anyone else could request one but the edition had 'sold out'. Not sure how that's possible with a free book but anywho, no idea how many were printed but I'm guessing pretty small numbers and the publisher (Classic Colour) seem to specialise in really limited runs. I'll post again when I receive my copy with more details and pictures.


Who said you can't get anything for free these days....


Video above taken from Thirst's Vimeo page:
Pictures below taken from This is Colossal:





Always Remember to Print Fair Children


This week through the most tedious link imaginable I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to help with the setting up, hanging and dismantling of 'The London Original Print Fair' at the Royal Academy.  The print fair is an annual exhibition where printers and galleries come together to showcase and sell their wares to collectors and the public for a very short 3 days. There was a huge mix of contemporary prints from artists such as Gavin Turk and Damien Hirst to more classical fine art prints which was nice to have although it was quite intense walking round trying to take it all in. Below are a few photos I took  of pieces that caught my eye when I had a walk round on Wednesday. Overall it was an invaluable experience to see how an exhibition is put together and hopefully I'll get the chance to do myself one day.








Not So Innocent


Ok so over the past month I haven't posted anything here at all due to a pretty epic 12 week term and rather a lot of work. All of this work is still in progress and will be uploaded over the coming weeks as and when I get it done but for now a project that I have finished...

In short, I made a 30 second advert for innocent smoothies as part of a competition they are currently running. The only rules were that the advert had to use the music provided by innocent and involve the super smoothie character (see above) 'saving the day' in some way. Thanks to Jules and Don for being sports and agreeing to help me film/play a part in the ad itself. If chosen my advert will be on t.v. and I could win £5,000...which could come in very handy at the moment. Watch the ad below and I may be asking you to vote for me fairly soon, fingers crossed...

 

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