After a small hiatus, issue 8 of Sway, the experimental zine I co-publish with Rory King is now out and available for download! For this issue, Rory and I were interested in exploring the idea of “dialogue” and wanted to take a different approach to the theme. Instead of each of us responding to the theme on our own, we decided to both work from the same source material and instead of responding to the theme of “dialogue”, we thought it’d be fun to use actual dialogue. We decided on a powerful scene from the second season finale of one of our favorite shows, Lost.
The result is two visual interpretations of the same scene and in my opinion, one of our best issues yet. I’m really, really happy with how this one turned out. Go take a look!
Issue 6 of Sway, the zine I produce with Rory King is now available for download!
You can view the issue here.
This issue’s theme is Freedom and features topics ranging from the Freedom Tower to free jazz, Martin Luther King to Charles Bukowski. I handled the first six spreads and Rory took the last six and this is the first time we’ve approached the topic from completely different angles making for two distinct points of view as you turn the pages.
As with each issue, we like to be creative with our chosen themes. For “freedom” we decided to try something a bit different. In addition to the three pre-chosen fonts, we allowed each of us one “freedom” font—essentially giving us the chance to use any typeface we’d like in addition to the issue fonts, which added a nice dynamic. Further, the pre-chosen fonts we decided to go with are related to freedom as well—Caslon is what the Declaration of Independence was first printed in and Gotham is widely viewed as today’s “American typeface.” We are playing with the idea of the typefaces of a free society in 1776 and a free society in 2012.
I like how this one turned out. Take a look!
Sway: New Issue and New Site
After a bit of a delay, I’m excited to release issue four of Sway, the experimental zine I publish with Rory King. This issue’s theme is “yellow” and I edited and designed the first six spreads, focusing on the use of yellow in culture whether that be Van Gogh’s Yellow House, The Beatles’s Yellow Submarine or the 1988 play Yellow Fever, while Rory edited and designed the last half of the issue, producing an encyclopedia of sorts of how yellow is used in sports, foods, and history. I’m really proud of this one and think it’s the most focused issue we’ve produced so far.
Download Issue 4: Yellow
In conjunction with the new issue, we are also extremely excited to announce the full Sway website which will now be home to all future issues and an archive for past issues.
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My friend Sarah Handelman publishes an interesting zine called Not French Cooking. In her words, Not French Cooking is:
[A] zine published by Sarah Handelman that explores relationships with and through food. Inspired by Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the series addresses ideas surrounding health, nourishment and culinary-based relationships. Each themed issue explores and shares many diverse experiences with cuisine. Everyone is welcome at the table.
In celebration of the holidays, Sarah put together a special issue called Serving Forth which centers around the idea of gift-giving (a favorite subject of mine) and I was fortunate enough to be asked to contribute an essay. The idea behind the issue is that each contributor would submit a recipe that would be “given” to someone else. Once the issue is assembled, each contributor has a full cookbook to give to that loved-one.
I wrote a little piece about drinking whiskey sours with my college roommates that turned into a metaphor for craving deeper relationships. Here’s a part of it:
The table brings people together. There is an open chair pulled out for you to sit and take a break from the world you carry on your shoulders. Share a meal, split a drink, break some bread. Share your life with those around you. Share your joys and your sorrows. The world is falling apart faster than we can fix it. Maybe if we all gather around the table together, the world won’t feel so heavy.
I wrote it in honor of good friends but feel like it was actually a gift to myself. It feels like something I needed to write. We have friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, and contacts on Google+, but these things don’t make me feel any less alone. We need deeper, more meaningful relationships in our lives. Some of my happiest moments were spent with good friends, good conversations, and good drinks. This essay is about that.
So, thanks to Sarah for asking me to participate and I hope you go read my entire piece and check out the entire issue (even if it’s just to try the amazing digital unwrapping). There are some great holiday recipes.
The second issue of SWAY, the themed zine I started with my friend Rory King, is now available for download!
Download Issue 02: Nostalgia
This issue is centered around the theme of nostalgia. The first six spreads are my explorations with a look into time, memory, the past, Proust, and Woody Allen while Rory handled the second half of the zine. I’m really happy with how this issue turned out and I think it’s a great follow up to our first issue as we are starting to find our voice and get into a good process. I hope you also enjoy paging through it as we start work on issue 3!
Sway
A few weeks ago my friend Rory and I were emailing back and forth about what our lives have been like since graduating in May and we both remarked that we missed the process of working on school projects. Obviously both of us have continued in design since graduation but we have since realized that those class design projects provided a unique set of challenges we don’t always get in the professional world.
In short, a class design project provides three things: (1.) a set goal and planned finished product, whether that be a logo system or a poster series, starting the project you know what you are working towards; (2.) chosen content, whether that be content and/or topics chosen up front or those assigned by the professor; and (3.) an open environment and forum for experimentation, growth, and exploration. The first two happen in the professional world, but the third is what makes the project more interesting. We realized you are essentially presented a project much like you would working in a studio but are given complete free reign in style, aesthetics, techniques, and approach and we missed that and wondered if it was possible to work in that process to continue our own personal growth and development as designers.
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