Books

Start your own f*cking brand

24 April 2020 in Books Comment

Start your own f*cking brand
Maria Erixon

Maria Erixon founded the denim brand Nudie Jeans with Joakim Levin, her husband at the time, in 2001. Today the company has annual sales of over SEK 400 million; it is one of Sweden’s best-known international brands and a global lodestar in sustainable fashion. The book offers a unique insight into the company’s journey, successes and setbacks.
“At the time, we were almost the only company building a brand based tangibly on values. When we started Nudie Jeans in 2001, we decided that environmental awareness and human rights would permeate everything we did. The world has largely caught up in 2019 and as we’ve grown, opportunities have opened up to us to be able to contribute to the journey. We’re trying to make good use of the chance,” writes Maria Erixon in the book.

In the book Start Your Own F*cking Brand, Maria writes about the little company that became a global brand, about successes and setbacks, and the sacrifices that entrepreneurship requires. The book is also a love letter to denim and the indigo dye that turns each pair of jeans into a unique work of art – and to everyone who has been part of the journey.

Book
100% Paper
Made in Latvia

Nudie Jeans

The Elusive Archive

23 April 2020 in Books Comment

The Elusive Archive

A reinterpretation of the printed 50-year archive of Biennale Interieur, Belgium’s major international design exhibition.

The archive, comprised of over three hundred magazines and newspapers, offered Specht Studio and collaborator Levi Lanser the opportunity to (re)shape, (re)interpret, and (re)invent the archive by selecting and publishing scans from the publications.

Rational content was approached in an intuitive way, with just a few parameters: 1) Intuitive action (picking the magazine); 2) Structured action (setting a timeframe); 3) Structured action (three scans); 4) Intuitive action (a personal scan).

Because the results were unknown, Specht and Lanser called the work an “elusive archive.” Elusive—meaning difficult to find, catch, or achieve.

The final publication features forty posters, as well as a transcription of an email conversation about the project between Specht and Lanser. A full list of magazines used in the project is recorded on the cover noting title, publishing date, and type of content used for the publication.

Published by Stockmans, in collaboration with Specht Studio and Levi Lanser

Conceived for The New Masters, a project by DIFT for Biennale Interieur 2018 in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Printed in a limited, individually numbered edition of 300 copies

80 pages
Unbound broadsides
Full color
12 × 16.5 inches

ISBN: 978-9-07-720755-0

Draw Down Books

Thought Pieces: 1970s Photographs by Lew Thomas, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Hal Fischer

23 April 2020 in Books Comment

Thought Pieces: 1970s Photographs by Lew Thomas, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Hal Fischer
Erin O’Toole (ed.)

In the early 1970s, Lew Thomas set out to disrupt photography in San Francisco. Tired of the mystical thinking and emotionalism that had underscored Bay Area photography since the 1940s, Thomas pursued a photographic practice grounded in ideas gleaned from conceptual art and Structuralist philosophy. A cohort of other photographers, including Donna-Lee Phillips and Hal Fischer, embraced Thomas’ mission, joining him in what became known as the ‘Photography and Language’ movement, named after a book and group exhibition of the same title produced by Thomas in 1976.

Thomas, Phillips and Fischer were all extremely active in the mid to late 1970s. In addition to making their own artwork, they published essays, reviewed shows and organized exhibitions. Under the name NFS Press, Thomas published a number of books designed by Phillips, including Structural(ism) and Photography (1978), which featured Thomas’ work; Eros and Photography (1977), which was edited by Phillips, and two books of Fischer’s work: Gay Semiotics (1978) and 18th Near Castro Street x 24 (1979).

Published in conjunction with an exhibition featuring photographs by these three artists that will be on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art January 4 – August 9, 2020, this volume assesses their work, their relationship to one another and their place in the history of photography in the 1970s.

Paperback
23 x 30.5 cm
216 pages
ISBN 978-1-912339-63-1
April 2020

Mack Books

Shoplifters Issue 9: DRAWINGS

10 April 2020 in Books Comment

Shoplifters Issue 9: DRAWINGS
Actual Source

Shoplifters Issue 9: DRAWINGS is a 536 page, alphabetically organized, directory of artists who draw and their drawings.

The work has been beautifully reproduced using fluorescent inks as a replacement for cyan, magenta, and yellow, giving these drawings the vibrance and saturation of the original pieces (and sometimes a little extra B-)).

Introduction by C.W. Moss
SIZE: A4 (210 x 297mm)
PAGES: 536
PRINT: Fluorescent CMYK
BINDING: Extremely fat soft cover
PAPER: Munken Print White (120 GSM)
AS CATALOG#: N04-017
Designed by Actual Source
Published by Actual Source

Pre-order Shoplifters Issue 9

Artists:
Raisa Álava
Cynthia Alfonso
Bráulio Amado
Jordan Awan
Molly Bounds
Jee-ook Choi
Sungmin Choi
Juliána Chomova
Pol-Edouard
Son Eunkyoung
Kyle Field
Milton Glaser
Gabby Gonzales
Adam Higton
Masanao Hirayama
Rachel Howe
Aaron Jupin
Ken Kagami
Franz Lang
Jane Lee
Soljee lee
Stefanie Leinhos
Allan Ludwig
Leo Macdonald Oulds
Korey Martin
Lilian Martinez
Stefan Marx
Geoff McFetridge
C.W. Moss
Samuel Nyholm (SANY)
Jeremy Pettis
Alice Piaggo
Jacob Rochester
Alva Skog
Sean Suchara
Lisa Vaccino
Alice Wietzel
Li Ya Wen
Kurt Woerpel
Jannis Zell

About Shoplifters

Shoplifters is a bi-annual publication featuring the work of contemporary artists, photographers, designers, illustrators etc,. Shoplifters doesn’t have a single identity, it’s size, paper, typography, and tone changes each time it’s published.

Actual Source

Yoshitomo Nara

6 April 2020 in Books Comment

Yoshitomo Nara
Yeewan Koon

The definitive book on the life and career of internationally acclaimed artist Yoshitomo Nara.

Yoshitomo Nara rose to prominence in the mid-1990s, a star in a generation of avant-garde Japanese artists associated with the neo-Pop ‘Superflat’ movement. This book, made in close collaboration with Nara himself, explores more than three decades of his work – and is the first truly authoritative monograph on the artist in more than a decade. Written by art historian Yeewan Koon and featuring texts by Nara himself, it includes his most recent work in painting, drawing, sculpture, and ceramics.

Format: Hardback
Size: 290 x 250 mm (11 3/8 x 9 7/8 in)
Pages: 330 pp
Illustrations: 380 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714879949

Phaidon

Comme des Garçons

2 April 2020 in Books Comment

Comme des Garçons
by France Grand
1 May 1998

Comme des Garçons — “like the boys” — is the title of a French soldier’s song. It is also the label of Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo. Reserved in word but radical in action, Kawakubo is one of the most influential and subversive figures in contemporary fashion. At the forefront of stylistic movements that rocked the fashion world in the early eighties, Kawakubo created Comme des Garcons in 1973 and continues to reinvent her vision of clothing with each show.

Her mysterious creations are often closer to sculpture than clothing. Ragged, asymmetric, voluminous, or distressed, Kawakubo’s designs mix eastern and western influences to articulate new shapes and a new definition of beauty. A figure at once rigorous, daring, and intellectual, this reclusive Japanese designer consistently receives praise from the press each season, both for her effect on new trends in beauty and for influencing the newest wave of young talent. Restlessly innovative, Rei Kawakubo has overturned every fashion convention over the past twenty-five years, ultimately redefining the very meaning of fashion itself.