Oz magazine
Sixties underground magazine Oz (cover of issue one above) has a legendary place in magazine history, both for it’s establishment-shaking attitude and for being where publisher Felix Dennis (Maxim) cut his teeth. But what did it look like? Issues are extremely rare – I’ve never seen a copy – but now most issues are available to view online at www.oztrading.net. The pages have been scanned at a large size, so it’s difficult to view using the site, but copy them to your desktop and you can view them easily in Photoshop.
It’s fascinating watching a fanzine develop into a (slightly) more professional magazine. Plenty of hippie nonsense, but also much that predicts todays environmental concerns. The notorious School Kids issue is present in full, the issue that led to an (unsuccessful) trial of the editors for obscenity. Check out page eight of the issue for the porno version of a Rupert the Bear cartoon that was a central feature of the trial. The issue was put together with the help of a group of school children including one Deyan Sudjic, more recently an architecture/design journalist and shortly to take over the running of London’s Design Museum.
