Reading List: February 2007

Crikey! A book! How did that get in there? Well, I guess at least it’s not a novel or something, although I did try to get through John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos [flickr] after buying a Village of the Damned [iMDB] / Children of the Damned [iMDB] double bill DVD. The Wyndham covers from the 70s are ace. I just don’t have the attention span for novels anymore. Sad, really. So what’s on me shelf?

Identity Kits: A Pictorial Survey of Visual Signals
I bought this from the States off Alibris UK [alibris.co.uk] after visiting the recent Alan Fletcher exhibition [designmuseum.org.uk/alanfletcher]. It was put together by Fletcher and ex-Penguin Creative Director, Germano Facetti [arts.guardian.co.uk] and published in 1971. It was kind of disappointing. I expected loads of corporate identity stuff from the 60s but it’s more esoteric than that. Still a nice thing to have. Kind of bizarre in places.

Entertainment Weekly [ew.com]
I love this mag at the moment. It’s like Smash Hits (takes off hat and bows head) for adults or a slightly smarter version of Heat minus the morbid fascination with people’s weight (actually take that away and there’s not much left of Heat really). One warning though, this is a quintessentially American magazine, dipped and glistening in good ol’ US corn(ball) syrup, so there is the chance EW could leave you feeling a little queasy.

Monocle [monoclemagazine.com]
This mag garnered so much media attention before it hit the shelves (I too waded in to the various discussions but mainly on other people’s websites [magCulture]. Cheeky!) that I don’t think I should mention it any further. So I shant… for now.

Wired [wired.com]

Mark [mark-magazine.com]
I made a promise to myself that I would hold out on buying Mark again for as long as possible after they parted ways with Machine [ourmachine.com] after only 3 glorious issues… but I gave in mainly because there were some lush houses inside this issue. Unfortuntely I hadn’t realised that A10 [a10.eu] seems to have covered most of them already. Dang!

T-Shirt Factory [beamst.com]
Another book?! Well, sort of. It’s more like a compendium. T-Shirt Factory marks the 6 year aniversary of seminal Tokyo T-Shirt emporium, Beams T and features a majorly random selection of design from a wide range of designers and illustrators such as Geoff McFetridge [thedirectorsbureau.com], Work in Progress [workinprogress.com] and Deanne Cheuk [deannecheuk.com]. Not a lot in there to read (and it’s mostly in Japanese) but an excellent, if erratic selection.