As the journalism and news industry continues to churn and find its way to a sustainable future, the New York Times made an open call to its readers to submit their photographs with captions to document the last decade in photos. I am rather surprised by the general lack of “best of the 00s” media coverage. Perhaps, it’s because we are also too busy cautiously looking towards the future. Regardless, it is important to be look back and think about the past before we go barreling forward. Happy New Year!

I recently got a nice package in the mail, my eagerly awaited issue 2 of Manzine. What looks like a large format zine is actually a clever take on mens magazines. Created by a group of writers and designers based out of the UK, who write for places like The Guardian, British GQ, and Arena (RIP,) Manzine riffs upon the world they helped created.

On a previous trip to London, I had the pleasure of meeting up with one of the writers Kevin Braddock, who I was first ran into after scouring the internet for a copy of issue 1.

I’m an avid fan of magazine publishing. Manzine has been added to my collection of Chap, Butt, and Fantastic Man. Going to sort of great lengths to find semi-obscure and certainly obscenely expensive international titles. (London, by the way, has some truly, awesome magazine shops, like RD Franks 5 Winsley Street, London W1 8HG T: +011 44 20 7 636 1244. Of course the exchange is a killer.)

But back to the issue at hand, no pun intended. Manzine is a different take on magazines, that moves in the opposite direction of creating magazines as art object. Here, Braddock and his conspirators, have gone indie, dyi, and underground. In he face of the ongoing implosion of the magazine industry, the writers, while still keeping their day jobs, are producing articles and columns that feel much more personal than you get in men’s mags, like writing about learning out to play pop songs (specifically by Phil Collins.) The article destructing the sexuality of a mermaid is more, dare we say intellectual, than what you get in Details or GQ.

The magazine, itself, feels disposable. Its low-fi design and barely better than newsprint paper quality, and of course, cheeky design give it a cheap look and feel to go with its a couple of pounds pricing, (Free (Two Quid where sold.)) As we learned in grade school, looks are deceiving, and judging books by their covers leads to misinterpretation. At first opening, I just liked looking at it, with its over use of typefaces and seeming new style guides for each two page layout. However, when you actually starting reading, personal articles about the art of fixing up a bicycle, an honest voice comes through the guy-ish surface.

What better way to spend one’s spare time than trying to reinvent and resuscitate magazine?

I love magazines. Although the industry as a whole model is busted, as titles are folding, advertising revenue is plummeting, and wholesalers are in lawsuits, while they are going out of business. Even before the recession hit, unsold copies (which are the majority of them) end up getting destroyed. On the bright side of things, Cunning and teamed up with HSBC to give travelers in Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 1 customized magazines. Passers-by had the ability to select content from 32 commissioned articles, get them bound, and take their personally curated magazine onto their flight with them.  Of course, the next step is to have the printing done by something like Espresso Book Machine.

Via the fine folks at PSFK.

Wojciech recently asked me to suggest some good books on design, which were more practical than theoretical. Here are a few suggestions that immediately came to mind. If you think something is missing, please let me know. I may also add a few more if they come to me. (Ed note: I’m recalling some of the examples from memory, so there may be an error or two in the examples I site.)

Edward Tufte, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”

While Tufte has written other good subsequent books on visualizing information, this one was the first. To my knowledge, the book was also the first to organize ideas on how to display quantitative data in a formal way. The book contain now classic examples, such as mapping Cholera in 19th century London and Napoleon’s army during an campaign in 1812 which relates time, temperature, and number of soldiers.

Donald Norman, “The Design of Everyday Things”

Another classic book outlines how design often fails the user (not the other way around,) by not taking her into account though the entire design process. Although the book’s examples mostly reference industrial design, the concepts can be applied to other design disciplines like graphic design, interaction design, and architecture. By the book’s end, the readers will forever recognize how often everything things, such as light switches, water faucets, and doors are poorly designed and labeled.

Gary Hustwit, “Helvetica”

While not a book, this surprisingly entertaining documentary film on the ubiquitous font tracks the font’s rise in a particular point in history and how designers still revere or reject it. Designers and non-designers come away from the film with an understanding about the subtle and overt power typography can have in skilled hands. Designer Paula Scher gives a hilarious quote connecting Helvetica to the Iraq War.

William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler, “Universal Principles of Design”

A book that I discovered by accident runs through and defines a wide collection of principles from many disciples of design (industrial, graphic, and architecture, etc.) Each principle only gets a brief two page overview, as the book thrives for breath. However, the budding designer can quickly get a sense of what practitioners have discovered over time.

Erik Spiekermann and E.M. Ginger, “Stop Stealing Sheep”

Although written in 1993, this book is still a fun and relevant read on the basics of typography. With an abundance of visuals, readers get exposed to many different examples of the same word in different contexts and typefaces to help show the nuances of type. Spiekermann of the firm Meta Design is also featured in film Helvetica. I’ve only read the first edition, but a second edition was published in 2002.

Scott McCloud, “Understanding Comics”

I love reading this book every couple of years or so, and not just because it justifies countless hours and dollars in my youth reading comics. Scott McCloud, creator of the also amazing comic book Zot!, formalizes sequential art, in a way that legitimizes the art form as a medium within itself. It was a book both comic book lovers and makers where waiting a long to be written.

Walking out of the C/E Spring Street stop, I got a “free NY Times” from a guy passing them out to riders leaving the station. I sort of knew something was up because it was a lot thinner than normal. Another clue is that it’s dated July 4, 2009, and full of articles talking about a future, where Gitmo is closing, oil companies are nationalized, and the National Health Insurance Act passes.

Here’s a screenshot of the site, nytimes-se.com, which has slow downloads times. A lot of people seem to be hitting the site, whose owner looks like a pseduonym, Ginsu and Treadmill Technologies?  I must admit that they did a good job mimicking the paper and web versions.

UPDATE:

I leared from Trebor Scholz’s, that the prankster activists group, the Yes Men are somehow involved, and have posted some video, which I can’t see because  I’m guessing the servers are still being overwhelmed with data requests.

We’re in the final stretch of a long presidential campaign, which is a watershed election for many reasons. The more obvious having to do with the race and gender of the candidates. However, there are lesser ones which are important as well. One aspect that people tend not to think as deeply about is the fact that we are increasing getting the most insightful political commentary from comedians like John Stewart of the Daily Show, David Letterman, and Tina Fey and the other cast members of Saturday Night Live. This observation is not my own, Charles Kaiser of Full Court Press, among others, have long championed Stewart and his staff writers for their dead-on political analysis.

With the country spending $10 billion a month on the war in Iraq, US banks struggling to survive and the world slipping in global recession, the increasingly ugly political presidential race blares onwards towards November 4th. This moment should be the time for journalists to step up and make sense of the world. And yet they seem two steps behind the joke makers. As long running dailies are turning weekly, traditional news outlets such as print newspapers, need to be making themselves more relevant, not less.

John Stewart’s interview with Peggy Noonan a few weeks ago was telling.  In the interview, Stewart at one point, gives an impassioned plea to his guest on how the politicians can get away with rhetoric which treats the public like children. The reason of course is that the people as well as journalists allow it to happen. (It’s the same reason for why the debate have been reduced to 90 second sound bite speaks which are so tightly controlled, that nothing meaningful is said.) It was so rare to as any journalist or tv personality show that he really cares about the country’s well being, rather an partisanship or sidestepping responsibility in the name of staying objective.

Similarly, the McCain / Letterman bro-mance turning sour was amusing to watch from start to conclusion. What does Letterman have to lose by a continuing barrage of criticism after being personally lied to by McCain on a phone call saying that he has to go to Washington to deal with the financial meltdown. Letterman’s cut to McCain getting make up with Katie Couric, during the taping of Letterman’s show he skipped was priceless. Further, in McCain’s kiss and make up appearance (which reeked of PR control,) Letterman pursued him on the qualifications of Palin and if he really thought Obama was a terrorist, in a way that journalist rarely dare to attempt. McCain tried to side stepped the questions, with rhetoric of “many words are said in politics.”

I can’t help but wonder if one of the main problems is that the journalists fear criticizing and questioning politicians, will result in losing access to their sources. Just like fashion writers who shred shows and don’t get invited the next season. This fear may make short term sense, but journalists will lose out in the long term. Stewart, often uses his television home of Comedy Central, the airer of South Park, as cover for expressing honest political views. “I can say whatever I want, because I follow potty mouthed cartoon boys!”  Actually he can say what he wants because he gets a lot of viewers online and offline, people blog about his segments, and lots of people of all ages do consider the Daily Show as an important source of political analysis. For this reason, he knows he can dig and deconstruction of McCain, as well as, Obama, because he knows that politicians realize his influence. Especially because the Daily Show will go on with or without them. The show doesn’t need direct access, so they don’t worry about being blacklisted.

Traditional journalism, especially newspapers and magazines are in trouble, and I’m really surprised by the response when there is so much to talk about. I usually don’t rant like this here, so in my follow up post, I’ll offer an alternative path on how journalism can regain it’s relevance.

Links to blogs with smart things to say about journalism:

Press Think - Jay Rosen

Buzz Machine - Jeff Jarvis

Unclaimed Terrortory - Glenn Greenwald

I finally made it to the New York Art Book Fair after being out of town last year. I think I learned about the first one a couple of days after it ended, which is quite typical for me.  In any event, there was the high and low brow and everything in between.

Image source: The Thing

I met Will Rogen and Jonn Herschend from The Thing Quarterly, which sends its subscribers a piece of art every quarter. I had just heard about it a couple of weeks ago, when I was out in SF, where they are based. It’s not quite publishing, although it’s definitely a self-described periodical, and a bit more like those organic local food subscription services where they mail you a box of kale or carrots or melons once a month, except its art and of course its quarterly.

I was pleased to find out that they were super friendly, and we had a short, but interesting conversation, on publishing. When I asked them if their backgrounds was in publishing, I found it of note that they said they are artists. That answer is personally great to me because I’m really intrigued in publishers (if you want to call them that) from non-traditional backgrounds.  I finally got my tax stimulus check from the federal government, and a chunk of it may just go towards a subscription, especially because Jonathan Lethem is on the docket as an artist. Will and Jonn are in town participating in various art organizations in the city of the rest of the week.

Stuart and David of Dexter Sinister had a table, and it always fun to talk to them, especially about geeky things like the text editor Tex. I ended up buying something that was quasi-expensive and actually deserves an entire post of its own later.

Image source: An Atlas of Radical Cartography

At the table next to Dexter Sinister, I met Alexis Bhagat who co-edited “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” which is a collection of essay and maps.  Coincidentally, Brett introduced to me the collection when I was at UArts a few weeks ago, funny how things work out that way.  The maps touch everything from oil to surveillance to garbage production. He was fun to chat with as map have been on my mind lately.

J Morrison was selling silk-screened man purses for a suggested donation. He had young women helping him silk screen images on the spot, and everyone was wearing matching colored tee and shorts. His assistants made a bag to order, for a good birthday present, which was my next stop after the fair.