A PRINTED MATTER
As the bureau-high stack of magazines in my room can attest, there's nothing a designer loves more than magazines. Magazines about fashion, journals about design, books about photography, reviews on art, zines of the underground, booklets on shows, printed matter, printed matter, printed matter. It's hoarding and it's obsessing and its ripping out pages. It's plastering shit to your walls to create your own mural of aesthetics, it's aligning them nicely along a coffee table, it's racing to the stands to pick up your best friend's review. Flipping through the pages and sniffing the ink.
That being said. It's still a bureau-high stack of paper at the end of the day, and though I may never give up the greatest pleasures of collecting my favorite issues and picking up what I believe to be works of fantastic graphic design, it now seems imperative that I find other alternatives for the monthly subscriptions that end up in the trash after a week or so of sitting on my desk.
Enter Above. I found it while killing time before a concert and I fell in love first with the cover, then the font, then the content. I had been looking for media centered on sustainability for a while, and it killed me that this magazine was right here right when I couldn't take it with me. The idea of lugging it around while trying to dance and drink didn't appeal so I quickly flipped through it and made a mental note to track it down online later.
Much to my delight the website lived up to it's sustainable preaching and offered the entire issue online as a gorgeous glossy flip through. It's still a tormenting internal conflict of mine to think about the end of the printed newspaper or magazine and the dawn of a new era of online reading. It simmers down to the personal conflict of my never-ending desire to create with the knowledge that I'm in essence creating more waste. So I find a moment of ease when I discover a magazine that is somewhat in that limbo with me. Still in print for purchase, but also online for free.
More on Above to come.
I've seen this trend... online zines. It seems to be a really good idea! I love it.... and then, like you I'm torn. I really want to touch it and hang and keep it.... but do we really need all this stuff?! I said no to my favorite magazine this week, knowing it would just clutter my luggage and bought a great chapter book.
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