this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all
this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all.
this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all.
this is a private blog for my design students and assorted other survivors. Tro blemakers all.

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Magazine of the Month















Underscore is created and self-published by Singapore-based design agency Hjgher. As such it is partly a show-case for the agency, but more importantly, according to editor Justin Long, it’s the magazine they felt should be out there but wasn’t.















Justin describes Underscore as ‘a magazine attuned to a simple rhythm,
quality of life’. And the physical manifestation certainly achieves quality –

this is a lovingly created, calmly paced magazine that sets it apart from
so much of todays media. The name has a double meaning – it underscores

the values it espouses but also, in a nice touch, refers to the other meaning
of the word, background music. So alongside
each issue the team prepare
a musical soundtrack to be listened while reading (available on the website
and signified alongside the related texts, below).
















Book-like in design (and feel – 144pp of heavy matt paper bulk it out to

about 15mm thick), the magazine immerses the reader in a global trawl
of curiousities. Issue two (the top cover) is based on the theme ‘Constant’

while the first issue (the lower cover) was about emptiness.






























Although based in Singapore the magazine has a global outlook, a quick flick yielding material about Japan, Switzerland, Berlin and Ireland. Only two issues into the project, the Hjgher team have already developed a community of like-minded collaborators around the magazine enabling the team to do things they would never have been able to achieve before launching the publication.






























The colour palette, layout and typography (featuring a custom headline sans serif) are all subtle but establish a clear identity that shares some elements with Monocle in the way it refers to book design but has far more flexibility than that magazine.

















The cover of issue two and the spread above feature artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger’s drawings of insects genetically damaged by the Chernobyl radiation. The issue also carries a pull-out print of one of the insects.

Highly recommended for its design and content, the second issue of Underscore is currentlyavailable throughout Europe, the Middle East and China, and issue three is due June this year.

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