This article was first publishing in June 2013 as a blog post on the Linefeed site. It’s a breif history of the blog and platforms used republished here as a matter of record. — I started writing about stuff online just shy of 20 years ago now so I’d thought I’d throw myself down the rabbit hole to bring the history of this here blogsite (or whatever you want to call it) bang up-to-date. Here goes nuthin’…

This article was first published in August 2010 via the Linefeed blog and in issue 3 of LineRead available via print-on-demand. LineRead was exhibited as part of the Walker Art Centre exhibition, ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’. — This is a big deal for me. Ever since I was a kid — regularly mooching up and down the luxuriously wide aisles of the Boronia Village Newsagency — the humble newsagent has always been my first stop when heading out. It’s the first place I seek out whenever travelling…

Object: LOT’s ‘Fresh Hours’ Concept: Dispersion — This essay was produced as part of the Design Curation & Writing Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven. Concepts drive emergent publishing formats. This is evident when looking at when and where the physical means of production (i.e. the printing press) recede in favour of the less tangible (such as server-based applications). This shift brings to the fore the concept of dispersion, or the “the shimmering fascination of…

This is the transcript of a conversation between Michael Bojkowski and Andrew Losowsky, recorded for Gym Class Magazine in September 2009. In it Michael and Andrew introduce each other to a number of publications that test the boundaries of what it means to be considered a ‘magazine’. — Andrew: The truth is, I don’t have quite such a huge magazine collection — a few hundred, yes, but that barely takes up a bookcase and a small cupboard. For reasons of space and economy, I’ve become rather choosy about what makes the cut, which in the main means magazines…

Fashion needs new. In it’s search for whatever is next, the fashion industry is often voracious. Yet every now and then ‘next’ gets served up in a shiny complete package that just makes sense. — Enter Vetements, and Vetements’ designer Demna Gvasalia’s initiation into the house of Balenciaga. Balenciaga, the brand, has maintained a bold, graphic stance since it’s inception at the hands of Cristóbal Balenciaga back in 1919. Gvasalia enters the ranks of radical designers who have worked under the Balenciaga banner such as…

First they built the ideal framework for sharing video online. Then they built a network of creators on the backs of this ‘millennial’ (or as unkindly put in a BBC radio documentary, ‘pack-horse’) generation — a demographic born with the internet yet economically impoverished by previous generations. Then they started messing with them in a way that looked suspiciously like they didn’t really know what they were doing.

Superheroes and space wars seem to be the only universally exportable commodities big studio Hollywood execs care to understand right now. Luckily, there was still much to see in and outside of the Hollywood sausage machine. You just had to keep your eyes peeled. — Not only did the franchise set-ups become more labyrinthine in 2016, in their urge to spawn more sequels and spin-offs, but the targets started moving too. 2016’s surprise hit being Deadpool, a — yep — superhero movie but for a more mature audience (so 16-year-olds instead of 15-year-olds) that was…

At long last typeface designers, no matter what rank, have broken away from the very recent obsession with perfecting the geometric sans as focus turned, this year, to variety and a glimpse into possible future directions via variable fonts. — An obsession that led Rudy VanderLans, demigod of digital typeface design from back at it’s birth in the early 90s, to suggest typeface designers have fallen into a type of ‘Infill-ism’ and for many others to ask if the design of typefaces had reached a saturation point. VanderLans described the…

In this shiny, new golden age of dramatic programming — bought about by renewed competition from young, upstart media companies such as Netflix and Amazon — broadcasters continued choosing the darkest timeline to commission in 2016. — Only this year the search was on for a new vision for humanity (something better than human), or something that would help explain why we were suddenly all living in bonkers crazytown, or ways to escape into similar but not always improved dimensions.