21-year old student Connor Patrick O’Brien has developed a nice line in satirical videos and websites while studying Fashion Communication: Journalism at Central Saint Martins. 

His latest project is a tabloid print publication. Miss Render, a magazine disguised as a catalogue for a fictional AI assistant of the same name. Created using AI, Patrick O’Brien skewers the promise of the technology through interviews, features and adverts, and uses the visual language of middle-era Apple to give its 64 pages a convincing sheen of truth. 

What are you doing this Monday morning?
I’ve just started my placement year from Central Saint Martins, and right now I’m interning at the Sarabande Foundation until the start of November. This morning I’m at my desk editing a reel.

Whenever I have to restock Miss Render, I Lime bike to magCulture during my lunch hour. It takes about 25 minutes to cycle there and 25 back, not counting finding the bike, so I normally get back a bit late. For breakfast today I had Coco Pops. I wish I could say I read books whilst on the train, but I normally just scroll TikTok.

Describe your work environment.
I’m in an office in a converted Victorian stable block in Haggerston. There’s taxidermy everywhere. Heart 80s is on the radio, and there are three other people in the office today, including the CEO.

It’s a very different environment from the one I made Miss Render in, which was mostly in my bedroom in Essex, working on screen, occasionally going into uni for tutors’ feedback. The whole thing took about a month and a half. I normally end up working at night, because if I get an idea during the day, I spend the whole day thinking about how I’m going to do it, and I can’t think about anything else until I do it. 

Which magazine do you first remember? 
Do you remember those tacky soap magazines they stock in most supermarkets? The ‘EastEnders’ and ‘Hollyoaks’ ones with really dramatic headlines about someone either getting murdered or kidnapped, or both. I love how intentionally ugly they are. The bad cutouts of people, the stretched fonts, the clashing colours. But they’re not trying to act like they’re anything else, and the people buying them don’t care. 

I also vividly remember Take a Break at the self-checkout with my mum, reading the headlines of some tragedy or crime like ‘Wicked friend flushed my child down the toilet.’


Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine? 
I’ve learnt to be honest with what I like. In my first year at Saint Martins we had to relaunch a magazine, and I chose Wet Magazine from the seventies. Not because I genuinely understood it or loved the message behind it, but because I thought it would make me sound quite intellectual and niche. It was sort of a flop because it didn’t really have anything new or interesting to say, and you could tell there wasn’t anything deeper behind it. It was my first time making a print publication, and I kind of hated it, which made me determined to make something a lot better.

Anyway, The Fence is one of my favourites. I mostly read it online, late at night, as I like to go through all the old articles. I love that it can do serious investigative journalism and be funny at the same time. I don’t think you’d find its articles anywhere else.

What other piece of media would you recommend? 
This past week I’ve been saving nineties telenovela title sequences. The combination of the green screens, the wind machines and the overacting is so good. I know ‘Dos Mujeres, Un Camino’ is the obvious one, but the title sequence is perfect.

Describe Miss Render in three words 
Flawless, tireless, affordable.

Is there a particular experience that led you to produce an AI satire?
I initially only knew that I wanted to make something about AI fashion models. I kept seeing AI start-ups popping up and they felt so easy to satirise. Maybe too easy. I think good satire has to be believable, have a serious, well-informed point behind it, whilst at the same time not being too preachy nor trying too hard to be funny. It’s  really difficult to balance.

I’m anti-AI models, but I didn’t want to make something that just bashes AI in a very righteous way—I don’t think even people who despise AI would read that. It’s too depressing. I’d rather set out the argument and let you make up your own mind, and humour lets you laugh at something even when the subject matter is bleak.

The images of Miss Render are AI-generated and then edited. I liked the idea of using AI to critique AI, and I don’t mind if people hate the magazine for it. But I’m also not acting like I’m changing the world with Miss Render.

Apple was obviously a big influence on the aesthetic. I enjoyed taking what AI is framed as today—technological innovation, Silicon Valley start-up—and putting it in the nineties and early 2000s, where it looks like a cash grab rather than a revolution. The datedness lets you see the sales pitch for what it is. Apple is really fun to satirise—the slogans, minimalist but colourful, corporate but weirdly personal, everything centred on one product or person, like a cult. I guess Miss Render is Steve Jobs and the iMac combined. Or Elizabeth Holmes.

You’ve developed your critical/satirical voice on a number of digital projects—including a Google parody as your website. Why produce Miss Render in print?
Print always scared me. I think it’s because I got my first computer when I was eight. I used to wonder how anyone could possibly prefer print when digital is so much more convenient. I was also never someone who had that story of seeing Vogue at the age of ten and ripping through the pages, so I felt a bit intimidated when I started university as my only strength felt like digital. But there’s a magic to print that I dismissed, which I think you can only fully appreciate when you make something yourself and see it printed in front of you.

Equally, AI is something we mostly encounter digitally, and taking it out of that contained space and making a physical catalogue makes it more real, and more invasive. I used newsprint because I like that it’s so disposable. AI has real environmental concerns, so printing it on biodegradable paper you can just recycle felt right, both for my own conscience and the concept. I like the idea of people reading Miss Render and then throwing it away. Someone asked why I didn’t use thick glossy paper, since Miss Render is meant to be a luxury product, but I think that’s too obvious. Newsprint comes with a built-in mass production cheapness that’s hard to find elsewhere. 


What’s your next target? 
I’ve been thinking about making a cult next, around people who keep making content nobody watches. There’s something very devoted about posting into nothing and carrying on, and people finding that content feeling niche or chosen. I’ve been collecting pamphlets and brochures, ones that are trying to recruit you. 
Miss Render is probably done, but this has definitely made me want to continue working in print and combine it with digital. 

Highlight one story from the magazine that sums up your ambitions for the project.
‘Interviewing AI Katie Price.’ It’s a parody of a trashy pop culture interview, but there’s a serious question behind it about consent and personalised AI sexual content. Sometimes when people interview an AI bot they treat it as a profound philosophical encounter,  asking it things like ‘are you conscious?’ and then being shocked when it churns out some pseudo-deep answer. I think you learn more by doing the opposite. I asked her to rank supermarkets by how sexy they are, and then to explain the Second World War. She answers both in the same flirty register, which is the point. It shows you what the bot's been told to be, regardless of what you ask it.

What has publishing taught you that may be helpful to anybody else planning to make their own magazine?
Sometimes people won’t get what you’re doing, which can be really frustrating if it’s clear in your head. At times my tutors didn’t understand what I meant while I was describing it. It was only at the final crit, when the thing actually existed, that it worked. But you won’t find out whether an idea is any good by describing it. And honestly, sometimes it won’t be good.


What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
I’ve just sorted my ESTA. I’m going to New York in a couple of weeks to see a friend from my course who’s interning there, and I’ve never been there  before!

connorpatrickob.com
@connorpatrickob