Now in its second year, Publication Fair boasts posters printed by OMFGCO and Container Corps.
The 2010 Publication Fair was held this weekend at the Cleaners at the Ace Hotel in Portland. We were on hand to scope it out and to staff the Pinball Publishing /Scout Books table. I scored some amazing printed works and, in the midst of doing so, spoke with the exhibitors about about their work. This three-part video series highlights those conversations.
Watch the first installment below.
Two titles.
Justin Bland lives in Portland. Here he makes books, small books that straddle the border between art object and publication. His books have been distributed by Café Royal Books, Kaugummi and other notable entities. His work was recently included in the book Fanzines by graphic design historian Teal Triggs, released earlier this year by Thames & Hudson Publishers.
Find his book projects at his website. Also see his flickr stream, where he regularly posts images of his own work and print objects made by others.
Nieves introduces an app for iPhone: device-based reading for independently-produced publications is becoming a reality.
I’m buying zines today in an unlikely place: the bus. I’ve just downloaded the newly released iPhone app from Nieves, an independent publisher in Switzerland, and on the app have been reading zines from their catalog such as Drinking Baileys from a Skull by Jody Barton; Grid Sewing by Lizzie Finn, and Untitled by Tobin Yelland.
As I’ve purchased and downloaded the titles, there are calculations taking place in the value-tradeoffs part of my brain that silently outputs go/no-go purchasing decisions. I’ve had my eye on the print-version these zines for years now, but hadn’t yet pulled the trigger because shipping costs attached to online purchases feel like a tax to me; but now in one bus ride I’ve bought three zines at $0.99 each.
The Nieves app behaves exactly as it should. The reader’s library is displayed as a grid, the zines’ covers facing the viewer. The navigation is intuitive iPhone UI as it should be. For example, when a zine is being read, holding the iPhone upright displays a single page while rotating the phone horizontally changes the display to a two-page spread. Swiping the screen turns the page in the appropriate direction. These behaviors can also be found in other apps such as Zinio and are certainly part of a new set of expected behaviors for screen-reading applications.
Making zines look good since 2005.
Café Royal Books is a UK-based independent publishing house run by Craig Atkinson. He started the project in 2005 to produce printed publications by artists he thinks are “doing something worth seeing.” I’d argue that Café Royal’s publications are what’s worth seeing, with their careful attention to aesthetic details and paper choice. These books certainly adhere to typical zine-budget production methods and format, yet possess a distinguished air that elevates the practice of zine-making to a new level.
That Cafe Royal specializes in short-run publications means many of the titles in its extensive catalog are no longer available for purchase in the shop. A tragedy? Maybe. Or maybe producing ephemeral editions makes these objects more desirable in their fleeting availability, and perhaps ultimately more valuable.
A favorite title is Atkinson’s own From Sometime Around Then Until Somewhere Around Now, a collection of photography diptychs exploring uncommon visual associations. Check it out.
Summer has arrived in Portland and it’s spectacular weather for bike rides. I took mine out to local shops to see what new publications have hit the shelves recently. This post shares some of what captured my eye and even my imagination…
Make a zine in 2010.
Make a zine in 2010. It has been about 13 years since the zine scene was really “happening” nationwide, but the current artistic, cultural, and aesthetic landscape seems to be all about nostalgia and irony.
As a mode of participating in 2010, consider seeking out a typewriter, gluestick, sharpies, and a clip art book, putting on some floral-print Doc Martens and ripping a hole in the knee of your jeans, and then launch into making a zine.
“But now blogs are where I share and absorb knowledge,” you might be thinking. “My MacBook Pro doesn’t really go with my Floral Print Doc Martens.”
If you already write a blog but are interested in doing something different with your writing or your image-compiling abilities, consider making a cheaply producible, zine-style book anthology with visual art to compliment your writing. Or, conversely, if you make a photo blog, get a friend to write pieces to compliment your images. Bring it all to a different audience through turning it into a book.
If you spend a lot more of your time reading blogs than reading books, consider spending some time in the middle ground: zines!
The most direct way to becoming a zine appreciator– or “zinester”– is to make a zine yourself.
Fadge, the first release from BT Livermore's Banner Year Press
BT Livermore is a pretty impressive artist. Not just for his passion, integrity, or artistic merit, but for his sheer business power. He’s equal parts entrepreneur and cartoonist. BT has been self-publishing zines and comics for years now and has never seen a reason to relinquish any of the labor to others because he can simply do it the most efficiently and precisely himself. He is now a master at DIY screen printing and book binding. He hopes to offer up these skills to others under his new venture, Banner Year Press.
I met up with BT across the street from his studio at Backspace to chat about his work.
Gabriel Levinson at work in Chicago. Photo courtesy The Book Bike.
Gabriel Levinson is a peddler of used books — correction, make that a “pedaler” of used books. Levinson is the founder and operator of The Book Bike, a custom-built tricycle stocked with 200 pounds of books and zines. Each Saturday, Levinson pedals his bike-library to Chicago’s city parks where he gives the materials away for free to anyone who wants them. No money changes hands at the Book Bike, if you want you got it no strings attached. The goals of the project are to support independent literature —by purchasing all of its materials at independent bookstores and presses— and to promote indie publishers by getting them into people’s hands. Since the project began in 2008, The Book Bike has placed over 3000 new and used books with readers.
Find out where The Book Bike will be next at bookbike.org
Photo: The Book Bike flickr.
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Field Notes and Fifty States:
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Coffee Common, Scout Books, TED 2011:
"The people serving you coffee today come from a movement, not a company."
So reads the first... Pinball Publishing is a creative publishing company located in Portland, Oregon. We are fueled by a love for print, collaboration, and the manufacture of meaningful things. Pinball powers a growing web of interconnected projects, including Scout Books, Bangback, and Print Pinball.
Bangback is a place for print. Here we share our own print projects as well as expanded coverage of print culture at large.
Print is dead. Long live print!
