Plethora Magazine #5
When we talk about large magazines we generally mean large in extent, the number of pages. This Copenhagen title has only 52 pages yet is the largest magazine we’ve seen for some time, possibly since 80’s favourite Manipulator.
Plethora’s pages are a massive 520 x 720mm, a scale that demands a leather folio to carry them. Which may seem ridiculously pretentious, but in fact suits the project perfectly. The heavy, off-white Munken paper rejoices in space and time – its scale slows down the turning of the pages — and is the ideal medium for a gentle meditation on the moon, or ‘Aurum Luna’ as the title page has it. The leather casing adds to the experience.
Science and art collide inside, with line drawings, contemporary art, NASA archive photography and reportage imagery all telling different moon-orientated stories. Plethora is rich in format, presentation and content, a visual delight. You wouldn’t/shouldn’t cut it up but the quality of production means you might frame the full-page images and hang them.
NASA archive
Spiral Heads by Pavel Tchelitchew
NASA archive
Element, by Nicholai Howalt
NASA archive
The crescent moon-lipped Ainu people of Hokkaido
Plethora is a sumptious object, packed with strong writing as well as images. It adds another marker to the spectrum of contemporary magazines, right at the very opposite end to recent deliberately slight launches such as Real Review. It uses great paper, special inks (check the field of metallic gold on the back cover, below) and vast scale to revel in a pure tactile magazineyess, the key factor that makes it our latest Magazine of the Week. It’s a reminder of the power and effect of beautifully produced print.
Editor-in-chief: Peter Steffenson
Art director: Benjamin Wernery