Obviously, I bought these 1950s issues of »Country Fair« because I fell in love with their splendid cover illustrations. But also the magazine’s content is worth mentioning: lessons on how to shoot pheasants, articles on beekeeping and ads for harvesting machinery add up to an interesting reading. The genius behind the striking magazine covers is named John Hanna. He was an Australian who arrived in London in 1947, making his living as a commercial artist and cartoonist there until 1962. During his time in London he created over 50 covers for Country Fair, so the chances are quite good to hunt down some of them on Ebay!

As sad as this sounds, as beautiful is the work of artist Nick Georgiou. And here‘s what he says about it: “My art is inspired by the death of the printed word. Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. As a society we’re shifting away from print consumption and heading straight towards full digital lives. My sculptures are products of their environment —both literally and figuratively. As often as I can, I use local newspapers to add authenticity, and the form the sculpture takes is a reflection of the personal connection I feel to that particular city.”

Lying in bed with an unseasonal flu has its good sides, too: The last two days I browsed through the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog of the U.S. Library of Congress. It contains an unbelievable amount of digitized images and offers you an insight into U.S. history in a very direct way. It includes everything you might think of, just go ahead entering some keywords into the search field and you’ll get hooked! I was amazed by the photographic footage of the encounter between settlers and Native Americans in the 19th century, Civil War photos and the oil rush in the early 20th century.

Of course, the well-known images by Walker Evans for the Farm Security Administration are included, depicting life in rural America between 1935 and 1944. But until today, I had not seen the color series from this huge collection of 175,000 images.

Another tip for your next flu is the Picture Library of the Royal Geographic Society. These pictures will take you on a journey round the world in the footsteps of famous explorers and travellers.

Pics: Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Collection

Together with more than 30 photographers, stylists, hair & make-up artists and models we were part of a fun project during the last weeks. We took care of the visual concept and layout of »Œ Magazine«, which is a new fashion magazine that focuses on Berlin’s fashion scene. The magazine is non-commercial and is in parts financed by crowdfunding. Check out the project’s campaign video here on WeFund and if you like it, feel free to support a good cause!

Contributing photographers: Amos Fricke, Dirk Merten, Lars Borges, Christoph Schemel, Andreas Lux, Jochen Arndt, Rachel de Joode, Clément Martz

Contributing stylists: Christian Stemmler, Christof Post, Rainer Metz, Åsa Lundström, Brenda Barr, Antje Gohlke, MAVEN, Julian Zigerli

Contributing hair & make-up artists: Alexander Soltermann, Henriette Höft, Manuela Kopp, Miriam Jochims

»To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.« This is Google’s idea behind its vast Street View project that allows us to take digital promenades in many cities, from Aberdeen to Adelaide and from Zürich to Zaragoza. On The Nine Eyes Of Google Street View Tumblr, artist Jon Rafman has collected the most amazing Google Street View moments that were captured totally randomly.

Out now is the latest issue of The Electronic Beats Magazine with one of my favourite covers so far, picturing a really romantic german shepherd photographed by Mikael Kennedy. Reactivating quill and ink and trying to perform some serious handwriting for the opener pages illustrations felt quite nostalgic! If you want to have a look at the whole issue: Klick! And also past EB issues: Klick!!

The latest issue of Electronic Beats Magazine is all about »down under«. Having done the Art direction of the magazine for quite a while now I was happy to make some adjustments to the layout, first and foremost to the cover! Another highlight apart from the redesign is Robin Jonssons fashion story »Along a trail less travelled«, the amazing styling is by our dear friend Rainer Metz! If you want to have a look at the whole issue: klick! and also past eb issues: klick!!

Elle UK lately really makes a difference with its collector’s covers. Here’s the June cover, a blurry Kylie shot by David Slijper. And some more beauties from earlier months.

We have been talking about it for quite a while.
Now we did it!
We founded our agency for design & communication. We named it MAVEN (since a maven in Yiddish/Hebrew is a trusted expert in a particular field) and designed the logo and CI.
Now if you have anything to design or communicate pass it on to the mavens!