Publishing

Meatpaper Magazine

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When people hear of a magazine called Meatpaper, they immediately conclude that it must be a recipe-laden publication for cooks or a trade magazine for those in the livestock and butchering business. Meatpaper is directed at neither. Actually, it is very hard to describe. Created by San Francisco-based Sasha Wizansky, whose background is fine art, graphic design and sculpture, the concept for Meatpaper started as an art project. About four years ago, Wizansky says she was struck by the realization that “everyone had a story to tell about their relationship to meat. I realized that a magazine would be a perfect way to explore this idea.”

Teaming with journalist/radio reporter Amy Standen, Wizansky self-produced what she describes as “the only magazine about the idea of meat – what we call the fleischgeist” — defined as “the spirit of the meat.” She says fleischgeist refers to “the growing cultural trend of meat consciousness, a new curiosity about not just what’s inside that hotdog, but how it got there, and what it means to be eating it.”

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Humor

Vendor Client Relationship – Reality or Spoof?

Particularly in this lousy economy, we are all victims…and victimizers. We are increasingly operating in a “used car lot” environment, where buyers feel it is their duty to bargain and don’t feel that they have gotten the best deal until they have eliminated virtually all profit from the sale. This video satire runs too close to reality for many, not just on the design-creative side, but up and down the line.


Video produced by Scofield Editorial, Inc.

Book Excerpt

“Rules of Thumb” by Alan Webber

by Gary Kelly / @issue Interview / vol. 6 no. 2
by Gary Kelly / @issue Interview / vol. 6 no. 2

Editor’s Note: Alan Webber, who co-founded Fast Company magazine in 1995, has long recognized the role of design as the great differentiator in business. In his most recent business book, “Rules of Thumb,” Webber shares insights gleaned from his own life and work experiences over the past 30 years and distills them down to 52 rules of thumb. Webber’s rules aren’t the end of the discussion; they are the beginning, with readers invited to add their own rules. Here we reprint Rule #28. Webber’s other 51 rules are just as pertinent and interesting.

Rule #28
Good design is table stakes.
Great design wins.

In the last few years since I left Fast Company and started traveling a lot, I’ve noticed a global leitmotif, as if the same piece of music were being played in different countries all over the world.

In Tokyo at a conference on innovation I sat down with an old friend, a business sociologist and strategist for leading Japanese companies.

“Japan used to be a low-cost exporter of manufactured goods,” I said. “But those days are clearly over. What’s Japan’s new national strategy?”

“We don’t think there’s a problem,” she told me. “Japan intends to compete globally on the quality of our design.”

It made sense to me. Japan has an exquisite sense of style and presentation.

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Advertising

Honda Insight: “Let It Shine”

This TV commercial for the new Honda hybrid, the Insight, is being aired in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia where the environmentally friendly car is being sold. Made by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, the TV spot appears to synchronize hundreds of Insight LED headlights, turning them into “pixels” to create animated images set to the tune of “Let It Shine” by Berend Dubbe.

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Humor

Identity Guidelines Run Amok

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Anyone who has ever been involved in designing or managing a graphic identity program (pretty much everybody in design and mar-com) has experienced fleeting impulses to rebel. Rigid rules and authoritarian orders run counter to freedom of expression and creativity. But identity guidelines are the foundation of branding. Consistent and repeated use builds brand recognition. And yet! Just once, wouldn’t it be fun to run the logo in pinstripes or push the corporate colors into a more punk PMS shade? Or tell the “identity police” that being forced to use the logo is a blight on your beautiful cover design?

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