Feminist illustrations, Cambridge creativity and a roam around Saõ Paulo: it’s September things!

We’re back with our September list of printed goodies, ready to ward off those back-to-school-blues and get your creative juices flowing. This month we’re pouring over Leanne Shapton’s alternative ghost stories in Guest Book, obsessing over the work from Papier’s talented illustrators in its feminism issue and taking in the sights of São Paulo’s bustling Rua Treze de Maio in Flaneur.

From a journal tackling questions for the future to a deep dive into the wholesome world of hobbies, this month’s Things has it all. So get stuck in!

Papier Magazine

Much-loved illustration magazine Papier is back for another joyful and colour-filled issue. Casting an illustrative lens on feminism, this resplendent A3 publication brings together some of It’s Nice That’s favourite creatives from across the field, asking each to reflect on their relationship to the theme. With contributions from the likes of Alva Skog, Kelly Bjork, Dorothée Richard, Tatjana Prenzel and Kikillo, these diverse and intelligent responses are displayed with a short text by the artists, delving into their ideas further.

Æffect

A future-facing journal from the staff and students of Central Saint Martins’s Innovation Management MA, Æffect tackles the difficult questions which arise from a rapidly changing world, asking: “How do we understand change, feel change, make change happen? What kinds of strategy, foresight and organisation do we need to manage the complexities of innovation.”

Combining interviews with fascinating artists like sci-pop-gendernaut Sputniko! and key experts from futurists including Bruce Sterling and Franco Berardi, Æffect’s first issue “Futureality” remaps the changing terrain of innovation, putting ethics and resilience at the centre.

973 Issue 1: Open

A new magazine shining a light on the creative culture of Cambridge, 973 is thoughtful and beautifully designed. Organised around the theme “open”, this exciting debut issue takes a closer look at the city’s diverse creative scene including an open-community housing development, the re-opening of Kettle’s Yard gallery and a discussion with artist Stuart Pearson Wright on the issue of open access information.

Guest Book

Uncanny, poetic and quietly beautiful, Leanne Shapton’s Guest Book combines prose, found imagery and original artworks in a series of contemporary ghost stories. These interwoven narratives feature ethereal presences which haunt situations both mundane and surreal; a woman returns from a visit to Alcatraz with an uncomfortable feeling, a figure reveals itself in a dog video shot on a phone and a tennis star collapses after his wins, crediting them to an invisible being. Unnerving and gut-wrenching, comforting and amusing, Guest Book is a singular artefact in whose pages you could get lost for hours.

Flaneur Issue 07: São Paulo

Taking us to a different street in every issue, nomadic magazine Flaneur drops us into the heart of São Paulo in this weighty and colourful volume. Plugged straight into hustle and bustle of Rua Treze de Maio, page by page, layer by layer the lives of the street’s residents, passers-by and shop owners unfold. Through texts, photographs, collages and drawings this vast 300-page document creates a sprawling and nuanced image of life on Treze de Maio, one which is a far cry from vacant stereotypes and tourist clichés.

Profane No.8

A magazine dedicated to the world’s most passionate collectors and creators, Profane hits our bookshelves once again with a new issue dedicated to the most passion-driven activity of them all: the humble hobby. Flooded with colour and brimming with eclectic wares, this vibrant eighth issue is a love letter to amateur obsessions and the wonderful people with a ruthless excitement for work that lies outside of the “productivity” framework.

Much Care Less

Daniel Kent and Sebastian Delaney’s Risograph book is an ode to the unsung beauty of processing effects. Constantly cycling the book’s various processes back into themselves, to make this experimental publication, the duo began by selecting masters from their black and white photo prints and using them to create monoprints by hand. These monoprints, scanned back into the computer and printed on the reverse side of the book’s pages, are only fully visible in a hands-on inspection of the book, but small flashes of blue at the edges of pages hint at their secretive presence.

The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2018

The results of the annual competition to discover the most beautiful Swiss books, these outwardly identical publications have deceptively different insides. Designer Teo Schifferli transformed the nineteen winning books into vessels standardised by print, format, and paper with a graphic concept which plays on the relationship between original objects and their copies.