It’s been all digital with me for 18 years. Since I was 13, digital digital digital HTML internet, and then one day I’ve got InDesign open and I have this from-the-gut need to make things I can touch. I want someone to show me paper samples. I want to understand bindings. I want data sets to call the cops and complain, breathlessly, that I visualized them in ways they never dreamed.
A couple of months ago, the founders of Concrete Flux, a Beijing design journal, put out a call for volunteers. I needed to learn some shit about baseline grids, and surely they needed someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of 90s movie scenes in which JCVD is only wearing boxers, so I figured this was it, this was my in. These people were going to make me arty and good at typography. The reality was a little different than I imagined: we ended up getting all Breakfast Club in some backroom cafes and having Korean pancake parties, but somehow, in the cracks between, a zine got made.
Anyway, we launched issue three (theme: Escapism) a couple of days ago for Beijing Design Week. The covers are made of hologram sheets that make awesome vinyl-DJ noises when you scratch them, and there’s a lot of deep photographs of people with clothes pins on their faces and stuff like that. The mag is 50RMB (about US $8) if you wanna snag one (write us on the Concrete Flux site to order).
