An eclectic range of zines, books and prints: it's September Things!

It’s the beginning of a new month which can only mean one thing: our monthly round-up of all the best bits and bobs posted through our letterbox, Things.

Notoriously, August is a quiet month as everyone jets off around the world for a week or two of much-needed respite in the sun. This fact didn’t seem to dampen your want to share all the amazing work you’ve been creating, however, and, as always, we were spoilt for choice. As a result, this month’s Things is particularly eclectic ranging from zines with black and white illustrations to monographs of abstract sculpture and paintings to Risographed prints of disembodied legs. Enjoy!

Guy Field: Opt-Out

Guy Field is a London-based creative specialising in illustration but who also works as an art director and designer. Opt-Out is a short zine, made in collaboration with Kiosk Books, which chronicle a series of spam emails Guy received in the previous years. Set in idiosyncratic typefaces according to the content of each email, the correspondences are accompanied by amusingly mocking illustrations on the following spread.

Gemma Smith: Found Ground

Gemma Smith is an Australian artist who works across painting and sculpture. Found Ground is the first comprehensive study of her abstract body of work, created to both present and mirror her style and concepts. With coloured page edges, special multicoloured pages with folded corners, the hardcover also features a unique folding corner, which reveals the publication’s title if bent backwards.

We Need to Talk

Headed up by editors Vanessa Kowlaksi, Margarita Leonenko and Ana Fernandes, We Need to Talk zine upholds the importance of conversation, in any form. In its first issue, however, the publication takes the notion of an interview as a tool which can be used to explore communication. “Our contributors have come into conversation with us from a range of geographic locations, theoretical perspectives and multimedia and stylistic approaches to the topic,” reads the opening page of the publication, “and have proposed a number of ways in which the seemingly mundane and quotidian nature of communication can be refigured as a site of resistance, critical reflection, negotiation and as a source of inspiration for creative production.”

Michel Walpot: Legs Series

Eindhoven-based graphic designer Michel Walpot sent us some prints from his ongoing Legs Series. Printed using Risograph, each image shows a disembodied pair of legs in the midst of playing badminton, tennis or squash. Simple in their concept, Michel’s images are graphically pleasing and have been included in Erik Brandt’s Ficciones Typografika – a project dedicated to typographic exploration in a public space.

Der Grief

We’re big fans of Der Grief here at It’s Nice That and so when its 11th issue – guest edited by Jason Fulford – landed on our doorstep, we got very excited. After ten years and ten print issues, this new edition marks a change in the publication’s appearance and approach, while still focussing on the same concepts. Now, all of its future issues will invite guest editors to engage with re-contextualising single images through their individual working methods. In this issue, photographer Jason Fulford sources from Der Grief’s archive of imagery, pairing 67 photographs with snippets of text from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Monument

Created by Mary-Lou Berkulin, Monument magazine’s first issue was sparked by a visit to a storage space in which she explored the last finished collection of Rozema/Teunissen – a collection which exists almost exclusively analogically. Monument aims to bring back these items to the surface, acting as a paper monument for Dutch fashion design around the turn of the century. With beautiful photography, printed on textured paper, this publication tells the story of an underappreciated fashion label in an intriguing and thoughtful way.

The 108

So called because of the number of stitches on a regulation baseball, The 108 “tips a cap to all that baseball is and was and shall be” ahead of the history-making Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees game in London, June 2019. By exploring the cultures of the cities in which the sport first took root, The 108 examines the people and events that make the sport what it is today.

Hell Gette: #Landschaft 3.0, #Landscape 3.0

This bilingual publication presents the recent work of Munich-based artist Hell Gette. A mix of paintings and ceramics, the work investigates the landscapes of the 21st Century. The pieces merge and explore the conflict between the analogue and digital worlds, depicting emojis and digital paraphernalia through the materiality of paint and elevate such iconography in doing so.