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For his design trilogy, Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized, Gary Hustwit and his crew shot nearly 100 hours of interview footage. After editing, only about 3% of that footage made it into the final cut of the films. In order to make use of the other 97 hours of conversation, which were cut for time and narrative and not quality, Hustwit has collected transcriptions of the interviews in a new book called, Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized: The Complete Interviews

He's seeking funding on Kickstarter for publishing, and in addition to the Build-designed book, rewards include an hour-long highlight reel of the best unused interviews, an iPad version of the book, and bundles with custom Field Notes journals and DVDs of the three films. 

Back Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized: The Complete Interviews on Kickstarter.








Perdiz is a new bilingual design magazine from Spain that's billed as "a magazine about people and the things that make them happy" and mixes a collection of profiles, narrative features, and advice lists that in one way or another explore the idea of personal happiness. In between issues, the editors maintain a blog with supplemental contributor interviews, short lists, and meditations on art that didn't make it into print.

Issue #2 of Perdiz is out now.

Look for an excerpt from Perdiz in Nothing Major Features later this week.





Earlier this month, the English artist's book publisher Visual Editions got a strange message from its printer. One of its more ambitious upcoming titles, a book containing 16 individual maps with extensive hand folding work required, faced production delays of nearly a month. What's worse, since receiving the news, Visual Editions discovered that a slightly larger British operation, the boy band One Direction, had plans for a book with the same title. To prevent a much different book getting lost in a sea of SEO doom, it tweaked the title to Where You Are

Outside of the unpredictable title change, these delays are nothing shocking for a publisher of visual writing. In recent months they've published Tree of Codes from Jonathan Safran Foer with intricate die-cut pages, reissued The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman with an entirely new visual layout designed by A Practice for Everyday Life, and coded an accompanying iPad app for another visual retelling of Composition 1, a 1960 work from Marc Saporta, whose physical book takes the form of a case of printed cards.

If you're still foggy on the meaning of visual writing, Visual Editions' own definition is a good starting place: "…visuals aren’t gimmicky, purely decorative or extraneous, but are key to the story they are telling. And without them, that story would be something altogether different."

Upcoming titles from Visual Editions include a visual retelling of Don Quixote and work from Tao Lin, Sheila Heti, and Adam Thirlwell.









What do Brooklyn chocolate makers, Dutch car designers, and a food grade cosmetics company in San Francisco have in common? They all deal in the medium of made goods. MADE Quarterly, a new magazine from the Australian press Published by Process profiles makers and small scale manufacturers from the United States, Europe, and Australia in glossy quarterly editions. The new issue, just the second yet, features interviews with the folks behind Best Made Co., Earth Tu Face cosmetics, the watchmakers at Uniform Wares, and Mast Brothers chocolate in Brooklyn.

Order a copy of the latest issue directly from Published by Process.





The second issue of Works that Work, a publication that dissects the impact of design advances, has an impressive list of practical design topics. In the space of a single book the editors manage to cover handmade soccer balls all over the world, the rise of the Boeing 747, globalization in the context of the shipping container, and a study of sometimes poorly concealed cell phone towers.

Issue 2 is available digitally and in print directly from Works that Work.



Useful Photography has a shared mission for both its books and gallery shows: to recontextualize "underwhelming images created for practical purposes" as compelling imagery. In the past, the series has examined found imagery created for the pornography, weddings, and war industries.

For the eleventh issue, the editors collected images used for human targets during shooting exercises at gun ranges. The unsettling portraits, including child abductors and a variety of armed aggressors, represent what gun manufacturers think Americans find the most frightening.

Issue 11 of Useful Photography is forthcoming from Kessels Kramer Publishing.





Lucky Peach, McSweeney's food magazine, which features the New York Times's Peter Meehan and Momofuku's David Chang on its masthead, has just released a new web game to promote their latest issue. The dead simple game, in which you must pilot an ASCII art rowboat toward different food choices, keeps score by increasing or decreasing the rower's weight. The issue, which is out now, features travel tips from Aziz Ansari and the story of a trip to the most beautiful Taco Bell from Jason Polan. 

Play the game, and order the The Travel Issue of Lucky Peach from McSweeney's. 




David Horvitz's new book How to Shoplift Books falls somewhere between poetry and a more conceptual artist's book. The instructional text, variations on the simple mission of getting a book out of a book shop without paying, offers solutions like, "Tie the book to a dog, and walk out the dog out of the store," or, "Steal the book one page at a time from different stores." Despite a hardcover binding, Risograph printing, and the limited run of 100 copies, the publisher Automatic Books has kept the price of the book intentionally low. Automatic says it likes its releases to "remain affordable in order to facilitate the diffusion of artists’ works." [via Manystuff]

How to Shoplift Books is in stock now from Automatic Books.






A space in a busy Brooklyn subway station previously reserved for candy and magazines is now in the art book business. The Newsstand, a collaborative project from ALLDAYEVERYDAY and the 8-Ball Zine Fair will carry a curated selection of zines, records, and other independent publications in a small storefront right in the Lorimer Street/Metropolitan Avenue subway station. The store boasts an impressive list of local curators including McNally Jackson, Desert Island, and Co-op 87. [via Time Out]

The Newsstand is open weekdays from 9AM-8PM, and weekends from noon-5PM, until July 20.




A few years ago Alyse Emdur found a photo of herself as a child posing in front of a mural of a beach with her two siblings. When she asked about the photo, her parents explained it was taken in a prison lobby during a family visit to see her then-incarcerated brother. After some research she found that these backdrop murals are actually a common practice for prisons, and in many cases are even painted by talented inmates.

The logic for prisons is that limiting photography to what's essentially an impromptu portrait studio protects potentially sensitive images of the prison's structure from being shared, while still allowing families to snap photos together that don't necessarily reveal that one member of the family is currently incarcerated.

When Emdur asked prisons for access to photograph a series of the backdrops for her book, almost every location denied her request. So instead of taking the photos herself, she collected images by exchanging letters directly with inmates asking if they'd share any family photos, and she eventually received 16 binders worth. 

Head over to BLDGBlog to read an interview with Alyse Emdur about the project. Alyse Emdur's book, Prison Landscapes, is available now.