The visual magpies at It’s Nice That have announced a forthcoming new issue, and very lovely it looks too.

As expected from previous form, it’s a mix of strangely compelling images and textual inspiration. Nice designed headlines too – a single layout with each inappropriate name scribbled out.

Pre-order before the end of the month, when the whole thing goes to print, for an exclusive James Jarvis. (Mag makers: this is a very clever way to help fund/estimate the print run.)

Can’t say nicer than that.

Longshot! magazine – the new name of 48 Hours (reviewed here) – is doing another all-weekender, this time at the offices of GOOD magazine in LA.

They just started, so you have a little under 24 hours to get your submissions in for the theme “comeback“.

They want fiction, non-fiction, history, interviews, poetry, cartoons, photography… they have pages to fill, basically. It also sounds like they’re open for longer pieces this time, which answers one of the criticisms I had of the first one. So why not spend your Friday night/Saturday morning making something for them? Me, I’m looking forward to following their tweets, peeking at the process on the Tumblr log, and then waking up on Monday and seeing what they did.

Submit your work here.

When we started Colophon, it was soon after the closure of CMYK, a Barcelona-based magazine event that took place in 2004 and 2005.

Other independent magazine-based events and exhibitions (distinct from mainstream industry gatherings with paid-for booths in huge conference centres) have also cropped up, including this year’s OK Festival in the Netherlands, the Magazine Library in Japan, the ever-moving Kiosk and most recently, De Zines in Madrid, which closes this Sunday.

The more the merrier, we say. Such events are wonderful opportunities to discover new magazines, meet magazine makers and forge new collaborations. As we plan more Colophon events (suggestions still welcome here), and hear rumours of more magazine-focused excuses to get drunk invaluable industry events to come, I’m delighted to offer you the catalogue from De Zines as a PDF download, thanks to co-curators Roberto Vidal and Oscar Martín.

Filled with independent magazines and thoughtful reflections on publishing outside the mainstream, it’s a lovely document, and a taste of what those of us who haven’t been able get to De Zines have missed out on. (The first pages are in Spanish, but there’s a full English translation at the back.) The exhibit is about to close, but its spirit lives on in the fantastic magsite No.Zines, which I’m told is about to get the RSS feed it lacks. Felicidades, gentlemen. Hasta la próxima.

Click here, download the catalogue, and enjoy. (9.8mb, PDF)

Ten Things is a collection of magazines, thoughts and ephemera that have been sitting on my desk for a few months while I caught up with deadlines. And apologies about the quality of the photos in this entry.

Dodgem Logic is best described as the brain of Alan Moore as nailed onto a sheet of paper and buried at midnight until it’s ripe. And it’s (mostly) great.

Under the heading “Colliding ideas to see what happens”, Dodgem Logic is the closest thing to a modern-day Oz as you’ll find. It’s unpredictable, unabashedly left wing, and lo-fi. A handdrawn page on guerilla gardening could be followed by a piece on genetically modified crops or a burlesque photoshoot or a recipe for lemony rice pudding or an obscene cartoon strip. It’s in turns daft and serious, and as English as a bowler-hatted cup of tea in the gloved hand of a boarding-school matron.

In the first three issues (I’ve not read four or five yet – five has a lovely spoof Vanity Fair cover), a few regular features appear. Each mag opens with three “great hipsters in history” (pen portraits of remarkable artists and radicals) followed by a few thousand words by the magazine’s founder/writer of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, From Hell/Neopagan/occultist/beard Alan Moore on the history and ideology behind a particular topic; the first three were radical publishing, anarchism and magic. (Mag fans should buy the first issue for the underground publishing piece alone.)

Other regulars include a surreal tabloid spoof called The Daily Mustard, an unusual stitching pattern, recipes, retooled anti-communist propaganda, and a hand-drawn comic by Josie Long. There’s also an insert about political scandals in Moore’s home city, Northampton; the original concept was that other publishers could create their own alternative local media, and insert it in copies to distribute in their area. I’m not sure if anyone’s taken him up on the offer.

As you might expect from all that, it’s wildly uneven. The design by Wallace Create is pretty amateurish in most places (apparently in a nod to Oz and its ilk, but we’ve moved on since then for a reason) and the writing veers from brilliant satire to whiny old radical/pervert.

When Dodgem Logic is good, it’s disturbingly brilliant, such as with Moore’s cover for issue 3.

Other times, it seems puerile and gratuitous, such as Moore’s “first ever entirely solo” comic Astounding Weird Penises. But hey, it’s his toy, and he can play with it however he likes.

At just £3.50 a copy (£2.50 for the first two editions), there’s really no good reason not to buy Dodgem Logic – and all back issues are still available online. It has a design, an energy and a sense of societal injustice that feels outdated – which is a very depressing statement to make. Well-made alternative publishing is all the poorer for having lost its radical edge.

More fun than Adbusters, more parochial than Mother Jones, DL is above all genuinely good fun, and Moore’s introductory letter alone is worth the cover price.

As the first line of the first issue says, “Welcome to Dodgem Logic. Price of admission: Your mind. And £2.50.” Get yourself some copies, fill your teapot and enjoy.

(PS Click around the borders of the website, and have your sound turned on. As with most things Dodgem Logical, there’s more there than meets the eye.)

As my faithful Twitter followers already know, Stranded magazine, the only publication made entirely by people unable to take flights home due to the volcanic ash cloud of April, is a couple of short weeks away from being on sale. It’ll be available both digitally and in print, with all proceeds to the International Rescue Committee.

Sneak previews available here… and it’s looking lovely. Keep watching the skies, people.

Ten Things is a collection of magazines, thoughts and ephemera that have been sitting on my desk for a few months while I caught up with deadlines

Here’s a question that has been on my mind for a while: How long will paper last?

I don’t mean, “Will we still print magazines in 20 years time?”, I mean will today’s magazines degrade into unreadability, and if so, how fast? When we look at old newspapers, magazines and books today, many of them are yellowed, faded, and so brittle that they crumble in our hands. Is this the fate of all paper? By the time I’m 50, will my magazine collection be little more than musty and expensive confetti?

Paper experts are welcome to weigh in on this one, but as far as I can gather, there are at least two reasons why this won’t happen, at least not for a few centuries.

The first reason is related to the process of making paper. The second is a result of a shift in raw materials, which has inadvertently made magazines more durable.

Picture by DevonTT

Let’s start from the top. Why does paper yellow and age (delightfully known in the industry as “slow fires”)? The answer is, essentially, that acid is dissolving the paper’s fibres.

Next question: where does the acid come from? Paper is mostly vegetable matter. It contains all kinds of compounds that, if left to their own devices, will slowly degrade into acids and other things over time – more quickly, if placed in direct sunlight and humid surroundings.

A slight aside here, while I explain how paper is made. It’s a bit like where babies come from, except it involves enormous grindstones and/or a chemical bath.

If you want to make paper brutally and cheaply, you put a tree into a grinder, and keep crushing the resulting woodchips until its flat enough to feed into a Laserjet. More or less, anyway.

This is known as ‘mechanical paper’, and its how book and magazine paper used to be made, and is still how newsprint is created. It’s loud, effective, relatively cheap – however it leaves all those degrading compounds within the paper intact. Worst compound of all for our purposes, the one that has archivists waking up in cold sweats, is Lignin, which is the Gremlin of compounds – if you want your mechanically processed paper to last, you mustn’t let it get wet or be around sunlight. (Eating after midnight is ok.)

As mentioned, newsprint is still made from mechanical-pulp paper, which is why it doesn’t last too long outside of a sealed chamber. Very old (earlier than the 1930s is a safe bet) books and magazines are the same.

The faster, more efficient, and leading-to-stronger-fibered way is to put huge amounts of woodchips in industrial-sized vats known charmingly as “digesters”, throw in some sulphur and other chemicals, and go and watch Doctor Who until some decent chemical pulp is pooped out the other end.

The result is a pulp that’s stronger than its mechanical counterpart, created by a process that also has the neat side effect of removing the Lignin.

Some of the acid-producing compounds do remain intact, however. Except they’re then inadvertently neutralised thanks to the second industry shift.

Picture of Kaolin cliffs by Terry

In order to make magazine paper glossy, as well as to give it a little more bulk, manufacturers use a “filler”. In much of Asia and the USA, until recently, that principally meant Kaolin, aka China Clay, also used to make porcelain. In the west, it’s principally mined in Georgia (the state not the country), where it’s known as “white gold”.

There are two downsides to its use, however: it’s mildly radioactive – so a truckload of magazines can actually cause a flicker on a Geiger counter. (Here’s a radioactive measurement from a 1999 copy of Playboy). And the aluminium salts in Kaolin can lead to further acidic degradation. So much for no Lignin.

However, Kaolin isn’t used everywhere. It has also become gradually more expensive, so many paper mills in the US have turned to the ingredient used more commonly in Europe: calcium carbonate, aka chalk. Not only a decent chemical to make paper glossy, it also has the unintended side effect of being a base. In other words, it neutralises acid, and so, any paper made with chalk instantly becomes acid-free.

More chalk in recent paper mills means good news for us collectors, then. The downside is that there’s no easy way to know which compound was used to make each magazine in your closet, until they start to crumble. Deacidification is expensive – it cost the Library of Congress about $12 per book. So best keep the entire collection locked away from the sunlight (UV makes most inks fade) and with a small cup of baking soda nearby just in case.

As for the environmental implications of all this paper milling… that’ll have to wait for another day. In the meantime, rejoice: your European magazines, and more recent American titles, probably won’t crumble in the fingers of your confused grandchildren after all.

Back in 2006, Steven Meisel shot a politically targeted photoshoot for Vogue Italia containing models accused of being terrorists. The following year, he sent them to war and then to rehab.

And now he’s back in the same magazine, this time getting column inches with a shoot focused around the BP oil spill. Fast Company doesn’t like it, Refinery 29 calls it “fucked up” while reaction on the fashion boards has so far been pretty positive.

Fashion as politics? Maybe. Politics as fashion? Not so sure. And that’s the problem – in the context of the September issue of a leading Italian fashion magazine, it’s about the models and the clothes first, and the setting second. Problematic to say the least.

Fast Company has a snarky slideshow featuring many of the pics here.

Eulogy is a magazine about death and life
Its website includes a category inevitably titled “Late News”. Eulogy calls itself “the world’s first magazine to celebrate life and death” – though in fact it’s not the only magazine to focus on death and people. Now online only, Obit began life as a print project

A new magazine about Lads, Men and Menswear
Previews suggest that Client has emerged from a strong diet of Fantastic Man‘s typography and Butt‘s photography

Snow Magazine Cafe – now open in Tokyo
Also teases about a new magazine from the OK Fred team

Madrid exhibition celebrates the work of Rodrigo Sánchez
He’s the designer of the covers of Metropoli, the weekend arts supplement from El Mundo in Spain. More of his lovely work here (via Quintatina)

Colors back issues released on the iPad
Oh my. Firstly, this is almost certainly the start of a trend. Secondly, Colors is a great mag for this, especially if the images are hi-res enough to be zoomable. And thirdly, I would *love* to create an archival magazine-themed partworks on the iPad. Publishers/rights holders get in touch. Speaking of which…

Ten essential iPad apps for publication designers
Covers the right bases, with a couple I didn’t know in there

UK’s September issues digested
Because August means heavy lifting

New play takes place on the sub-editor’s desk
I would hate to be the person who had to proof the program credits. You just know what kind of people will be reading them

Much praised elsewhere, there’s not much to add about the marvellous Kasino annual, other than its a lovely size and format, and contains all the dry wit and thoughtful quirkiness of their previous publication Kasino A4.

The only difference is its size, the lack of monochrome layouts, and the ability to keep selling the same issue over a year while they work on more lucrative things.

My favouritist thing of all is how they use the see-thru nature of their paper to showcase important quotes related to the issue’s theme of Hair.

It’s really hard to photograph the result, but trust me, it works really well. Copies are available from MagCulture.com.

Gym Class is always a great read for anyone interested in magazine design, so it almost seems superfluous that it’s most recent edition is the Magazine Fanboy edition. (Disclosure: A discussion between me and Boico appeared in a previous issue, I translated the Spanish Esquire interview in this issue, and am working on a piece for a forthcoming edition. Actually best get on with that – sorry Steven.)

It’s the first glossy issue, and contains a elements of more conventional mags, with short pieces at the front, and some new regular sections, including a guide to trendy city spots. Sometimes they work, other times they feel a little too conventional, without the distinctiveness that makes Gym Class so refreshing.

It’s still a great read for mag fans. This double spread of Spanish Esquire covers is great.

Next up… no, it’s not Perfect magazine, but the new edition of the annual magazine Future Exhibitions. I reviewed the first issue here..

The cover of this one is actually white varnish on white, which reveals itself when held to the light at the right angle (or, it seems, threaten to feed it to the air conditioner).

I haven’t finished reading this issue yet, but so far it seems to suffer from some of the same problems as issue one – a semi-academic tone without an accessible structure to match its format/design – but there’s still plenty for museum thinkers to find useful, along with some lovely full-bleed images.

I was recently invited to speak at Sofia Design Week by ONE magazine. Their mag, which had just published its first bilingual Bulgarian/English edition, is worth picking up (disclosure: I’m in it).

An intelligent culture/arts magazine, its design is sophisticated without being off-putting.

However, I just heard that their editor and art director have been ousted for financial/internal political reasons, so it remains to be seen if it will continue along similar lines.

Closer to (my) home, Stack America continues to stride forward like an independent magazine-loving behemoth (but, you know, in a nice way). The latest mailing contains two publications that I highly recommend you track down.

First, the unconventionally wide Embrocation, the latest in a series of great independent mags themed around cycling.

Created by the unreasonably talented Jeremy Dunn, its a visual treat. The editorial runs a little loose at times, but its never less than charming.

The other mag I was delighted to include in the latest Stack America mailing (have I mentioned Stack America enough yet?) is Put A Egg On It. Created by the ever-precocious (but, you know, in a nice way) talents of Ralph McGinnis and Sarah Keogh, it’s just great.

Printed on green-tinted paper, with a gorgeous inky smell, it’s a veritable showcase of best of what zines can do: thoughtful, witty, surprising and varied, with engaging text that ranges from recipes to insider tales of bad-ass Brooklyn chefs. And, as we’d expect from R&S, it’s really well designed and photographed.

The green tint gives a strange nostalgic feel to many of the images. It’s not the best way to make food look appetising, but this isn’t about food itself, as much as people who eat. Its first issue intrigued me, but this time I definitely got it, and am hungry for more. As a side note, it was funded in part through Kickstarter.

My personal linguistic limitations mean that I can’t get the most out of Fotos Für Die Pressefreiheit 2010 (did I say that right?)

Despite not having a clue what it’s going on about, I’m still admiring of onlab’s tight, sober design and photoediting for this German photojournalism annual.

If you’ve read this far, then you’re probably the kind of person who enjoys this visual of Iranian magazine censorship.

It’s also printed on gorgeous, thick matt stock.

Before there was Odd, there was Mint. The annual showcase of Amsterdam’s AMFI fashion institute, the new name doesn’t cover up the same problems as always: the need to showcase everyone’s work equally makes for a publication without much narrative drama.

But it probably is what it has to be, and there’s some nicely designed interviews about the fashion industry with modish luminaries, each connected to the next, put alongside decent-quality student work.

A second magazine, which comes free with the main mag, features profiles of the graduating class of 2010.

Finally, a guidebook. As someone with previous form in creating unusual guidebooks, I was always going to be won over by Beyroutes, a distinctive guide to Beirut through its people and places.

Created by a local NGO/thinktank, and initiated/published by Archis, it’s not so much a pure guidebook as a location-specific publication themed around the Lebanese capital, containing documentary and instruction in equal measure.

It’s an invigorating, fascinating read, even if you have no intention of visiting the place (as for me, I can’t wait to go now).

The book is both published as a standalone title and also included free with issue 22 of innovative Archis stalwart Volume. Copies are available here.

Archis claims it’s the first in a series called “Never Walk Alonely Planet”. That might just be a gag, but I fervently hope not.

And finally, I can see my desk again. From now on, I’ll try to keep a tighter rein on things, promise.

The story behind Time magazine’s striking front cover
They started to protect her before it hit the newsstand.

Foto8 has a great summer subscription offer
My favourite independent photojournalism mag has a neat offer on right now: buy a subscription as a gift, get one for yourself free.

A potential new direction for magazines and video
I’m not blown away by what is essentially a slow video, but I do feel that there’s something there… I just don’t know what yet.

How to successfully use Kickstarter to fund your project
Plenty of publications have been using Kickstarter to fund projects – I’ll write about that in more detail someday – but I’ve never seen as much research into it as Craig Mod has done. Essential reading for those considering crowdsourcing solutions (via Jean Snow)

In defence of Apple
Exact Editions’ Adam Hodgkin refutes some of the “Apple doesn’t allow subscriptions” stories.

Memo to prospective freelancers
Village Voice editor asks writers to grow a thicker skin (via FishbowlNY)

How to shoot a cover with an iPhone
Including some post production (via MagCulture)