Yay, the Festive Season! (add a sarcastic infliction when reading that if you’re feeling less than joyous about the whole thing, adversely add another couple of explanation marks!!). Boicozine is having trouble not buying presents for ourselves right now though cause there is so much ace stuff around that we just can’t wait to unwrap. Here’s a couple of graphic gift ideas and some other stuff you might fancy (hey, there’s nothing wrong with giving magazines for christmas gifts… not in my book anyways)…

It’s taken a year to come together but you can finally own your very own miniature version of the If You Could Print Series 2008 [ifyoucould.co.uk] in the shape of the If You Could exhibition catalogue. Available via the Kemistry Gallery website or if you’re in London you can pop in a see the actual size posters in the flesh [kemistrygallery.co.uk]. ⑇ Maglophiles will no doubt have clocked this one already. It’s a very welcome addition to the interior design magazine cannon entitled Apartamento [apartamentomagazine.com]. Much in the way Carl’s Cars [carls-cars.com] subverted the car magazine format and Little White Lies [littlewhitelies.co.uk], the cinema magazine format, Apartamento takes a very personal, idiosyncratic and lo-fi approach to it’s subject matter. I skipped the first issue hoping this second issue would be better and it is. Inside you’ll find the editor of Interview magazine’s shady cottage in the middle of New York, Intersection’s Art Director Yorgo Tloupas [intersectionmagazine.com] and the Camelot solution and a Max Lamb [maxlamb.org] D.I.Y. project for you to have a crack at. ⑇ They’re a bit old now but it is the season for giving and Face37’s Type Trumps cards [face37.com] would warm the cockles of even the most ill-humoured type geek. Still available and worth a revisit. ⑇ This is a little off-topic but I found a bunch of old home-taped cassettes in the cupboard. They’re kind of neat looking with the patina of time and wear. Can you still buy cassette players? Has anyone seen any good ones around? Suck UK have made a USB stick embedded in an old cassette which is cute but expensive for the amount of memory you get [suck.uk.com]. You can find them at Pure Groove over by Smithfields (not Spitalfeilds) Market [puregroove.co.uk]. ⑇ Ghost Box [ghostbox.co.uk] has been going for some time now. It’s got something to do with Julian House [intro-uk.com] and his unmistakable graphic stylings act as the thumbprint on everything they produce. I thought it was about time I actually invested in some Ghost Box product as it seems to fit in with some of the Boicovideo projects currently on the go. Other Channels by The Advisory Group [ghostbox.co.uk/theadvisorycircle] features light comic touches in form of slightly wacky voice-overs about kids falling in ponds and stuff. Weird and ace at the same time! ⑇ If you order the physical object rather than the digital download you get The Ghost Box Periodical, an ace little 8-page ‘zine’ style piece of collateral, more of these please Ghost Box [ghostbox.co.uk], they’re ace. ⑇ You probably don’t want to give this one as a pressie, mainly because it’s free and that’d make you pretty cheap but it’s worth noting cause it’s a bit ace. It’s the Tom Dixon Review and is a Tom Dixon (*the company not the man [tomdixon.net]) catalogue disguised as a massive broadsheet. Designed with the usual inventive vigour by, long time collaborators, Graphic Thought Facility [graphicthoughtfacility.com]. It features proper articles and fab cover illustration by former Tom Dixon* employee Jamie McLellan [jamiemclellan.com].

Côme de Bouchony [comedebouchony.com] has helped launch the Boicozine cultural exchange programme by very kindly swapping a bunch of ace Ephemera from Paris with your humble author/blog enthusiast… actually there isn’t really any sort of official exchange thingy… I made that bit up. Sounds like kid of a neat idea though, huh.

From the top, clockwise: Côme’s business card × Social Club is a new… er… club for Paris [parissocialclub.com]. As reported in a recent issue of Grafik ’still no website’ Magazine [grafikmagazine.co.uk] Laurent Fetis [laurentfetis.com] has been changed with producing their flyer which is lush A3 size 12 page colour colour affair featuring contributions from Will Sweeney [alakazamlabel.com] and Gaspirator [myspace.com/gaspirator] × Magazine magazine is a magazine about magazines. It’s totally rad, near impossible to find outside of Paris and guest Art Directed by a different creative group each issue. For this edition the creative reigns were passed to Florence & Johann [florencejohann.com] × Côme may have to decipher this one for me. It looks like an ace two colour flyer announcing new publications by a publishing house but I’m not sure. The front image is a bit saucy isn’t it. × Programme produced for Tram [tram-idf.fr] which looks like some sort of Art Festival covering a number of areas and venues. Designed by a couple calling themselves Camping Design [campingdesign.com] × This is Sportswear is a ‘Icon Book Remix’ produced by Nike Sportwear for Clark magazine [clarkmagazine.com]. It’s one of a number of lush publications Nike have been producing in a push to reconnect with the creative community. Designed by ill-studio [ill-studio.com] × Lastly this is an ace little programme from this year’s Chaumont Poster and Graphic Design festival. Printed in metallic gold and reflex blue and designed by Frederic Teschner Studio [fredericteschner.com]

Stuff from above for this month includes clockwise from top left (going in a sort of spiral motion): Dear Lulu book [lulu.com] by James Goggin [practise.co.uk] and students from Hochschule Darmstadt as an experiment to test the print limited of the Lulu.com POD publishing system. × The little patterned square is called ‘Arthur’s Weave’ and is a new Bunkum Replete print to be produced for Bon Bon Kakku [bonbonkakku.com] in the coming months × 25×4 [25by4.channel4.com] is a book produced to commemorate the 25th anniversary of radical british television broadcaster, Channel 4 [channel4.com]. Designed with appropriate vim and verve by Spin [spin.co.uk] × Great British Editorial [indexbook.com] is a weighty tome featuring a random assortment of… well, what it says on the tin, which hangs together surprisingly well, even with the omission of any sort of explanatory copy. × The Fever Zine sandwich is an ace little compendium of illustrations produced by Alex and Simon at Fever Zine [simonwhybray.com/feverzine] for this year’s V&A Village Fete [scarletprojects.com] × The little square here are Bunkum Replete prints currently available, again through Bon Bon Kakku × Athletes is a minibook / exhibition catalogue featuring illustration by Siggi Eggertsson [vanillusaft.com] as shown at the Vallery gallery in Barcelona [vallery.es] × Kasino A4 [wearekasino.com]. Why has it taken me so long to write about this awesome magazine? A curse on meself for not mentioning it earlier. It is ace. This is the family issue, which naturally features input from the editorial teams various family members (including some ace fashion shoots). Will give you the warm fuzzies. × I know many of you tend to turn your nose up at collectable designer vinyl figures but have a look at these [strangeco.com]. They’re so darn cute. They’re designed by Friends Like You [friendswithyou.com] and go by the name of ‘Wish Come True’. They… er… jingle too.

I stuck this latest ’stuff’ picture on Flickr a couple of days ago so it was ready to link to this post. It’s got 24 hits already… okay, so that’s not a lot but the same image of some rather attractive perspex rods in a window in Brighton went up at the same time and only three people have looked at them. That’s… some large percentage less than the other picture. Anyhoo, from this I have concluded that pictures of stuff are dead popular. This one’s going to run and run…

This weeks stuff includes a whole bunch of free magazines. To any dedicated magalophile a carefully crafted and well designed free magazine is like a little piece of christmas has been clipped off the end of the year and fallen down the calendar. You’ll find quality free publications in most cities these days. London has a few that you’ll find around the traps. These are Boicozine’s current faves…

Loud & Quiet [loudandquiet.com] has grown from A5 to A4 with some rather fetching new uncoated stock (that’s non-shiny paper to the uninitiated). Downside is, it feels more lightweight now. Upside is that is looks well classy. ¶ Art & Music is pretty decent [artandmusicmagazine.com], if very calm looking magazine, with some cracking articles and a refreshing editorial tone. ¶ Fun looks proper ‘expensive art paper’ with it’s special colours and fold-out poster format but then it features commentary on stuff like dogging! Blimey, didn’t see that one coming! It’s all in good, er… fun though, and gets away with being cheeky and cheery enough to make you care. Nice one Fun [greatenjoyment.com]. ¶ Ello, it’s Monocle again [monocle.com]. Could help meself. It’s their best cities issue with their first Design Directory supplement and a spiffy cover designed by Ken Leung and James Melaugh [dontyouthink.co.uk]. Nice work if you can get it, I say. ¶ Red sunglasses. Not posh, just red. If they’re red, you don’t need posh, do you. It’s enough that they’re red. I’ll be wearing these a lot I think (even though I can’t see a bloody thing through them). ¶ Black Skull Candy. Skulls are a bit popular aren’t they? Do you think it’s because we’ve all got one? This one contains Extra Salty Salmiakpulver and seems to be wearing chips style sunglasses. Probably from Cybercandy [cybercandy.co.uk]. ¶ Dazed & Confused [dazeddigital.com] has a new Art Director and this time it’s someone who actually likes typography (which is lucky cause being a magazine, it’s chock full of the stuff), Rémi Paringaux. No longer do I feel alienated by their uncaring and unthoughtful misuse of dodgy typefaces. I’ve bought the last two issues now, the first for a long long time. Now the UK edition can give their Japanese sibling a run for it’s money.

That’s it fer now. More pictures of stuff soon, I promise. They’re dead popular, yknow.

The ‘Good Week for Stuff’ post seemed so popular I thought I’d do it again — I feel an irregular format of blog posts coming on… The first edition of Agency YCN’s new newsletter popped through the letterbox today [agencyycn.com]. It’s a fun and informative affair with high quality design work courtesy of Mr David Lane [davidlaneuk.net]. The pull out ‘artcards’ are a neat idea too. We like David’s suggested redesign for Grafik magazine too (see the PDF on his website) ¶ When Boicozine needs a sugar fix we (well, me) often find ourselves reaching for the Chelsea Yogurt Scotch [meiji.co.jp/chelsea]. The coffee and tea versions are a little rich but, bizarrely their butter scotch version is quite good. ¶ Avid readers will know about our (well, just me really… again) fascination with macarons, particularly proper french ones. Legendary purveyor of lush macarons, Ladurée [laduree.fr] produce limited edition boxes to put them in that look as confectous, and totally collectable, as the macarons themselves. ¶ If yer in London town, have a nose around the art shops cause there’s a special offer on packs of Sharpies [sharpie.com] on the moment. It’s the first set of textas… sorry, felt-tips… I’ve had in ages. If you’re in Cowling & Wilcox, check out their Alien Art Concept range of Spray Paints. Current fave is light yellow [mtncolors.com]. ¶ A new issue of colossal (512 pages, count ‘em) art mag Uovo [uovo.tv] is out, again art directed (as usual) with utmost finesse by Boletsferñando [boletsfernando.org] ¶ Finally managed to get me mitts on a copy of Case da Abitare [atcasa.corriere.it/casedaabitare], recently redesigned by Winkreative [see magculture]. The actual design of the magazine has definitely improved (even if it borrows a little too heavily from magazine design of the late 60s and early 70s, with it’s fashionably rigid grid system), the editorial just seems a little lack lustre now. Hopefully it’ll even out once the dust has settled.

It’s been a good week for stuff. I was going to do a ‘reading list’ [boicozine/reading-lists] but going through the little stacks of magazines piled up around the place I found I was still catching up with mags I was talking about way back like I.D. (not i-D), Dwell, Wired, Good… loads of American mags, which is a bit spooky. Our postbox, on the other hand, was looking a lot more interesting…

I love a magazine that messes with the format of magazines. A magazine that throws you curve balls in terms of pace and flow. Pin-up [pinupmagazine.org] is my fave architecture magazine at the moment for this reason. Issue 4 contains some pretty lush visuals too, including this rather fetching sunrise, as photographed by Ann Woo [annwoo.com]  / My prediction over the next twelve months or so, is that we’ll start to see the more established and well regarded blogs venturing into tactile formats such as printed publications. Charlotte Cheetham’s Manystuff have jumped ahead of the pack with Manystuff #0 [manystuff.org], which runs with the copyline, ‘More Real Than Fiction’. Designed by the ever inventive Pierre Vanni [pierrevanni.com]. It features glossy full colour pages (definitely not POD, folks) and contributions from Mr Alex Bec [alexbec.com], Mark Kremers[tex-server.org] and Damien Poulain [damienpoulain.com]  / Fever Zine [myspace.com/feverzine] is publishing in it’s purest and most joyful form. It is pure zine in all it’s black photocopied and pink covered glory. The low-fi format belies the high calibre talent behind the publication, edited by Alex Zamora and designed by boicozine contributor, Simon Whybray [simonwhybray.com]  / A special thank you to the fine folks at The Future Laboratory [thefuturelaboratory.com] for my MystaBot [tomybots.de]. Now if only I could get it to do the dishes too  / This week I was lucky enough to be part of a select few to make use of the Nike ID Studio [nikeid.nike.com] at the invitation of Mr Alex Bec who has completed work on Nike’s Art of Football [nike1-1.com] project on behalf of YCN [ycnonline.com] and ShowStudio [showstudio.com] (phew). I didn’t really cover a lot of the event on this here blog because of the scale and scope of the thing. It was massive. You can check out most of the fab Art of Football action on YCN’s Flickr page [flickr]  / Jim Henson lives on in the rhelm of plastic collectables with these ‘City Critters’ [flickr]. The one I got looks surprisingly calm compared to the rest of them. I think it’s because it’s the only one without those crazy, googly, muppet eyes. / The Chap’s Mega Breakfast arrived in the post from Lo Recordings [lorecordings.com] with an ace cover image by Graham Harvey for Non Format [non-format.com]  /
The blank CD is often sadly neglected by manufacturers as some where to splash a bit of design nouce about, unlike the blank cassette was in the past. 5 inch [5inch.com] recognised this fact a few years ago and have been producing dead brill CD designs to placate designers everywhere. Notebook is the boico house fave ’cause you can scribble all over them and they still look good.

Cover design for The Tubes‘ album ‘Young and Rich’ by band member, Prairie Prince [prairieprince.com]. Listen to some (only loosely recommended) vintage Tubes here [hushie.com]. A favourite of this man [nieves.ch].

Cole’s Funny Picture Book is odd, which goes a long way to explain why it’s appeal was confined to it’s home country. It’s also ancient old. It’s origins go back as far as 1879 when one of Australia’s first major booksellers, Edward William Cole [wikipedia] pieced together the first edition from his home above his Cole’s Book Arcade in the centre of Melbourne. It soon became a popular publishing staple in the young city and has been revised and re-released several times over the years (at last count the book was up to it’s 71st edition and rising).

E.W. Cole (as he was credited) [arcadepublications.com] compiled these ‘Funny Picture Books’ in his spare time, often cutting and pasting content purloined from various other books, newspapers and magazines from around the world (copyright was seldom an issue for Cole being so far away from the ‘cultural capitals’ of the world at the time). Chapters were divided into ‘lands’ such as Girl Land, Boy Land, Temper Land, Greediness Land and Laziness Land and would often feature advertising for Cole’s Book Arcade as added promotion for his store. Racial stereotypes abounded under the niave notion that displaying as many over evolved characters as possible, united mankind under one banner although describing characters as ‘niggers’ or naming them things like ‘Little Chinky Chow-Chow’ seems pretty backwards these days.

Still, the Coles Funny Picture Book remains a cultural oddity from a country that likes to keep these sorts of things to itself. As a kid, I always thought the rainbow bursting out of it’s pitch black cover was the best thing about it. Maybe it was…