Journal tagged by Illustration

Our favourite magazine about magazines is back! New launch Jim is the latest incarnation of Gym Class Magazine, written, edited and designed as ever by Steven Gregor. And this time he’s added his own illustrations— the focus of our review.

Despite the ubiquity of printed and digital images, we still need fresh inspiration. A new range of magazines offer image-orientated content and the opportunity for surprise, away from the limits of our personalised algorithms. Here, we look at the sixth issue of Sindrom, featuring the colour Blue.

Bimonthly US mag The Baffler presents a critical, liberal view of politics and culture, alongside short stories, poetry and art. It’s covers provide a blank canvas for an illustrator to highlight a feature in the issue; we spoke to design studio No Idea about this recent cover about counterpublics, drawn by Kurt Woerpel.

While some magazines waste multiple covers with repetitive imagery, Luncheon uses them to express the breadth of the magazine’s content. The three different images to ponder this time include a rich food illustration by the great Tomi Ungerer, whose beautiful work also defines the various ‘courses’ inside the issue.

If you’ve not seen The Smudge before, it’s a politically charged monthly risograph project from Los Angeles with a unique voice on what’s going on in the world. It uses comic humour and wears its point-making lightly, offering a platform for creatives to share their views.

The countdown is on: London’s shops (and those in the rest of England) are reopening next Monday. So it’s nice to see ES Magazine, the free weekly that comes with the free Evening Standard newspaper, celebrate the news with a set of four special covers today.