Monocle

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Monocle is Tyler Brûlé’s international news magazine which launches today, although it wasn’t available in Sainsbury’s or at the mundane newsagents of South Manchester. Maybe they’re only stocking it at the airport.

I like the cover layout. Black is a surprising choice and the decision to feature a cover photo uncluttered by stray type and a barcode is very welcome. The design is carried over to the equally elegant website whose creation was overseen by Dan Hill of City of Sound.

Previously on { feuilleton }
100 Years of Magazine Covers

Patience

Attempting to solve one problem with the WordPress theme has only succeeded in raising several others. For now commenting is possible but your comments will be rendered invisible for reasons I’ve yet to resolve. Your indulgence is requested. Thanks.

Update: So the moral of that episode was don’t try and fix anything that isn’t (too) broken. The problem—the front page occasionally needs reloading to render properly—was solved by upgrading to the latest version of the theme. (K2 is updated regularly.) Unfortunately this raised considerable, and far worse, problems involving the inability to post comments using either Safari or Opera. Firefox was okay but considering that 14% of visitors here are Safari users (not least myself!) that was an unnacceptable state of affairs. So I’ve returned to the older version and will update when they have something available that isn’t a flaky point release.

One final thing: I’ve disabled the comment spam catcher plugin as this was causing problems for some people when posting comments. The built-in WordPress spam filter is now running in the background which should make things more user friendly.

Update 2: Page loading delay was possibly caused by a faulty plugin which I’ve now disabled. We’ll see.

Currency secrets

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A 250 guilder note.

Robert Deodaat Emile Oxenaar, aka “Ootje”, was responsible for the design of the Netherlands’ guilders before they were swept aside by Euro blandness in 2002. In an interview with Creative Review he describes how he managed to hide secret references and little jokes in the designs, successfully evading the magnifying-glass scrutiny of the nation’s banking officials. Great designs they are as well, the audacity of a lighthouse on its side would never pass the watchdogs at the Royal Mint if someone tried that here.

Via Design Observer.

Frans Masereel’s city

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Pages from Die Stadt (1925), a “novel in woodcuts” by anarchist artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972). See the other ninety-six pages here. And by the same artist, Die Idee.

A pacifist in World War I, he tried to make his art accessible to the ordinary man. His works were banned by the Nazis and widely distributed in Communist countries. But he rejected “political” art and party affiliation, condemning all enslavements, oppression, war and violence, injustice, and the power of money.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The etching and engraving archive