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A pleasant surprise

Ben emailed me last week promising a surprise, which duly arrived in the post yesterday.

He and Russell have published a tabloid newsprint publication featuring some of their favourite posts from 23 friends’ blogs last year. The project came about when they found out how cheap and easy it is to print 1000 copies of a newsprint tabloid. They also wanted to draw attention to some longer written pieces that are more easily assimilated in print than online.

A simple idea, beautifully executed, Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet 2008 takes the online rules and applies them to print – the content has been appropriated without permission, and including all mistakes and typos, but with full credit and relevant links. Just like a blog. It makes for a beguilingly charming mix of content:

Musings on AS Byatt distractingly playing with a roll of sellotape during a panel discussion…

…and a collection of favourite meals from Flickr.

Each piece of content is attributed with URL and date.

The pages vary in pace, from a full-out picture…

…to an entire Twitter feed about landing on Mars (!)

Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet 2008 is a lovely publication that successfully translates blog content into print without losing the material’s internet origins. Ben and Russell have selected the material well, but they have also presented it in a way that doesn’t alter it’s significance. What are simple, small ideas and thoughts in an online context haven’t been squeezed into a hyped up magazine-style page design. Instead the publication uses a simple five-column grid and a single text font, Plantin (‘because I liked it in Monocle’, explains Ben) with various headlines faces as appropriate. This is where Ben has had some gentle fun – Dopplr creator Matt Jones’ post leads with the Dopplr font for instance, and the cover features what Ben calls the ‘font of the year’, Gotham as used by the Obama campaign.

They were keen to avoid creating a pastiche of a newspaper, the only concession being the use of random Tweets at the top of each page to mimic running heads. ‘Without that furniture the newspaper felt strangely unfinished’ says Ben.

The result is a tidy but raw blog-like feel that deals with presentation in a very matter-of-fact manner. Some images remain pixelated, being taken from the websites, but there is no attempt to make the overall design web-like. It just shares an aesthetic with the simplicity of blogging software templates.

Their editorial note signs off with the comment that, ‘2009 feels like a year for printing and making real stuff in the real world. It’s going to be exciting’. Sounds good to me – lets get making!

Get a copy of Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet 2008 here.