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Writer, illustrator, collagist, and all-around witty contributor...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:42:00 -0400

Writer, illustrator, collagist, and all-around witty contributor Margaret Finan pulled out all the stops for her Brief Encounters column in Issue 31: Quality/Quantity.

Finan’s take on the theme brings us to the world of magazines (a familiar territory here), specifically the feminist/post-feminist/post-post-feminist/pre-post-feminist/pre-pre-post-feme-yougettheidea genre.

Hey Girl magazine is her ode to all the editors and writers, most of whom are professional, pre-millennial women, who are getting feminism wrong in their female-empowered publications. She uses flippant language that imposes a routine belittlement and self-degradation on readers who are looking for everything from makeup tips to workplace ambition to dating tutorials. Her headlines work beautifully, not only for laughs but for the truth in their editors’ ignorance. You’ll wonder if these headlines are jokes or not.

Finan’s collage work is also telling, hitting a perfect note on the ongoing (and likely always-to-be ongoing) Photoshop debate. Why even use real models, one could ask, if photos of real women are going to be distorted to the point of disbelief. The quality of body image is subjective, of course, but you wouldn’t know that based on how the ideal is being sold to the masses.

Pictured above are five of Finan’s drafts for what ultimately made it to the page. Each one captures elements on this dialogue in entertaining and intellectual ways. Great work, Margaret!

-Ben

Hosting a party is one thing—having enough food and drink, good...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:00:34 -0400

Hosting a party is one thing—having enough food and drink, good music, the right combination of guests—but conducting a philosophical conversation throughout all the catching-up, the elbow grabbing, the networking, is something else.

We launched BCM31 with that exact creative challenge. The goal with each issue’s launch is to not only display artwork and cover art from the issue, but to interact with it somehow. Block Club is a magazine that relies on conversation and thought, where you can put it down and think about it days later, bring it up with friends and talk about it some more. We craft each issue to be an experience, starting with the launch party.

When guests arrived, they were instructed to choose a mysterious piece of white paper.

On the backs of most papers was the word “Quantity” with an image of something mass-produced—Velveeta cheese food product, identical suburban-development homes, reality TV star Honey Boo Boo, sliced white bread, Chili’s restaurant, a plastic bag, pop star Christina Aguilera, and processed ground beef. If you received one of these, you were the proud winner of the miniature poster you were holding.

On the backs of 40 papers was the word “Quality” with instructions to see a Block Club employee throughout the night. If you were lucky enough to snag one of these, you won a limited-edition print of one of the four letterpress prints we made in collaboration with the Western New York Book Arts Center, who also supplied a limited-edition print from their Small Press Book Fair, held the same weekend as our party. The prints hung as the artwork for this opening installation, but by night’s end, our walls were bare—another rumination on the relationship between quality and quantity.

This simple instruction begat a night’s worth of interaction, conversation about art, printing, installation, clichés, design, marketing, and the stories told in the issue. And dancing, of course. Lots of dancing.

-Ben

Block Club's Issue 31 on Cover Junkie

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:10:00 -0400

No big deal or anything, but Block Club is on Cover Junkie today!

Cover Junkie is at the top of our blogroll when researching the industry’s most innovative, inspiring magazine covers. The site regularly features cover art from New York Magazine, Vice, Wired, The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), The New York Times Magazine, Adbusters, Time, and many more from the world’s best magazine brands.

It goes without saying, though I’ll say it, that we are honored to be in such esteemed company. Thank you Jaap Biemans, founder of the site and art director of Volkskrant Magazine, for featuring us today!

And a huge thank you to our friends at the Western New York Book Arts Center, especially Chris Fritton, for their collaborative efforts on this cover. We’re thrilled to share the page with you, and all the wonderful work you’re doing for publishing here in Buffalo and around the world.

A great way to kick off our launch party tonight for Issue 31: Quality/Quantity! Have a great day everyone!

-Ben

LAW (“Lives and Works”) is a bi-annual magazine...

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:10:00 -0400

Photo by Joe Williams.

Photo by Elliot Kennedy.

Photos by Flora Maclean, Dave Imms.

LAW (“Lives and Works”) is a bi-annual magazine hailing from Brighton, UK. A ”portrayal of the beautiful everyday,” LAW sees style everywhere.

Our preliminary concern is documenting the overlooked and giving people a sense of belonging and recognition that perhaps they wouldn’t normally receive but in no way, shape, or form less deserve. Style tribes who may not be at the forefront of fashion but have a very particular aesthetic in their own right.

We are interested in making fashion accessible by challenging perceptions that it’s an elitist world and showing that it surrounds us all. We hope to appeal to butchers and builders, everyday boys who wouldn’t mind reading a fashion magazine, if only they could appreciate and relate to the content.

The second (hand-numbered) issue of LAW has just been released. Check it out here, or take a look at the very handsome blog LAW curates over at Brutus.

- Maggie

Here is the series we shot for the covers and pause pages of...

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:27:00 -0400

Here is the series we shot for the covers and pause pages of Issue 28.

—————

Old/New

The pristine cake is cut up, consumed, discarded.
Candles are lit, wished upon, extinguished.

It was satisfying, but now it’s too much. The second, third bites make you smile, but by then you’ve tasted it all. The frosting begins to harden; there are crumbs all over the floor. It’s time for some water and bed.

Just like that, the new has become old.
And another year begins.

—————

The issue’s debut just happened to coincide with our fifth birthday. Cake anyone?

-Brandon

This TIME Magazine cover is bound to make waves. I say, No big...

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:53:13 -0400

This TIME Magazine cover is bound to make waves. I say, No big deal. It’s a boob. We can’t even see the boob, but we definitely know it’s not visible for the sake of social disruption.

Sidenote: Apparently the writer, Kate Pickert, is a fellow Spectrum alum from UB. As colleague Kevin Purdy put it on FB: “Represent.”

-Ben

This is not the first time someone has compared domestic and...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:28:00 -0500

This is not the first time someone has compared domestic and international magazine covers, but it’s worth pointing out as it appears to be a trend. Especially with Time Magazine, which has once again dumbed down, as some are putting it, the cover story for their American readers while printing more serious, inarguably more relevant stories about the world for international readers. Kudos to any blogger or journalist bringing this to life, as I can’t assume most would ever be in the position to notice such blatant discrepancies.

What do you make of these sanitized American covers? Are we dumber than the rest of the world, or is corporate media money shielding us from actual news? Or both?

-Ben

Making magazines is too much fun. But this looks even FUNNER! Oh...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:21:04 -0400

Making magazines is too much fun. But this looks even FUNNER! Oh man, who wouldn’t want a magazine cover like this? Ahhhhh!!!! -Ben