New year means new influx of publications: it’s February Things!

February Things is back! Hopefully those January blues have blown away by now, and the daily swing is back in place. With the rush of the new year, we’ve seen several newly published magazines come our way. Crisp paper, fresh ink and hoards of exciting new editorial stories have graced the It’s Nice That office. February’s Things brings sees publications galore, but full of diversity of design and thematic output. Ever-thankful to the generous creatives that send in their work, if you’d like to contribute anything to next month’s Things, please send them to this address.

Les Jones: Elsie Magazine Annual

The first Elsie Magazine Annual came through our doors from Les Jones, the one-man creator of the independent magazine. Featuring over 200 pages of eclectic content, the publication ventures into the realms of “design, photography, typography and other found stuff.” Elsie was launched in 2011, but has since been published on an ad-hoc basis. It is a “blank canvas” for creativity where Les can “set balls rolling and follow them to see where they lead” and as a result, the magazine unexpectedly has no theme. Les adds, “There is no big message, no flag to wave — in fact, it is the perfect example of a famous quotes from Robert Rauschenberg: ‘I have nothing to say and I’m saying it!’”

Luiza Dale: Food & Nature

The Brooklyn-based designer Luiza Dale created a new publication Food & Nature while on a residency at Facebook New York’s Analog Research Lab last year. The staple-bound zine is an amalgamated study of landscapes and food assortments, printed on off-white, recycled paper. The textural, close-up images plays with the scale of food against mountainous regions and pebbly beaches, in a visual experiment between food and nature.

Little John Magazine: Issues 1 to 3

Little John is a three-issue publication project designed by Milan-based Parcodiyellowstone’s Filippo Bazzoni and edited by Luca Peretti. Though each issue has its own theme, the overall series “analyses the impact of the economic system on everyday life and society.” It investigates a particular aspect of our contemporary reality, specifically replying to the three questions “How? When? Why?”. With a contemporary design, the three issues are united through uniform type and bound together in a clear plastic sleeve.

Nichons: Nous Dans L’internet

The eighth issue of Nichons is devoted entirely to that all-encompassing thing that we call the internet. The biannual magazine is also bilingual. Through French and English, the publication features work by the artists-come-designers Moreno Schweikle and Janne Schimmel for the project Return to Default. In their latest work, also seen on the front cover, the creative duo take three “functionally perfect yet uninspiring office chair designs” and “digitally manipulate their DNA” to create highly designed, mutant lounge chairs.

Boom Saloon: Issue 004

Boom Saloon is a printed magazine that prides itself on “showcasing the importance of the arts and creative industries in a movement to utilise them for good.” The magazine’s ethos is founded on the belief that “creativity is integral to society’s advancement” working with a network of international creatives to develop independent thinking. Its stories take us across the world from the streets of India to the carnivals of São Paulo. Divided into four categories, places, people thoughts and tangents, Boom Saloon aims to “define editorial” in a different way.

Quentin Blake: The World of Hats

Few illustrators make it the status of “household name” quite like Quentin Blake. With an immediate style of illustration that has influenced generations of illustrators, the friend of Roald Dahl has released a new book around the world of hats. Designed by Burgess Studio and printed by Leycol, the illustrator interprets all sorts of different objects as hats. Through fluid watercolours, a marker pen that is running out, and a whole loads of other pens, the book sees how something as ordinary as a hat can be reimagined as something fantastical if you really think about it.

Little White Lies: Truth & Movies

Number 78 of Little White Lies also graces this month’s Things. The bi-monthly magazine has been running since 2005, bringing great movies and the creatives that run them to our attentions. From an editorial standpoint, this month’s issue has an undeniably standout lineup. In interviews with Richard E Grant, Joe Cornish and Lee Chang-dong, the filmmakers discuss their latest projects. While in the lead review, the magazine assesses If Beale Street Could Talk, a new film written and directed by Barry Jenkins based on James Baldwin’s novel of the same name.

Bus Group: Zine

The Berlin-based creative agency Bus Group is known for their design of Badlands magazine and teaser videos for Balenciaga. They recently sent us a small zine detailing small, pixellated images of the sides of buses. Each image crops into the luggage handle of a coach, providing a unique composition centred around the side of a coach. The witty comment on the studio’s name sees all kinds of patterns and type design come into play. They could be holiday buses, public transport buses, private party buses, who knows? It certainly makes you think about who actually designs these coaches and why haven’t we written about bus designs yet?!