Terrible People #3
Created with the concept to make a magazine about the stupid things that people do, Terrible People combines illustration with scathing social commentary, and has a powerful point to make about many of the nonsensical things that prevail in our culture.
Started by students at LCC as a college project, we're glad to see it is still going after they’ve left. Its weighty matte paper is stapled together, continuing the nonchalant vibe of the previous publications, however it appears held together by an elastic band. This actually holds in a mini-booklet about ‘How to protect your money from the greedy poor’ (above), which pitches its level of satire and ridicule perfectly to point out the absurdity of wealth inequality.
I particularly like the snide fashion feature (above) – featuring only articles of clothing that are sub-optimal in every way, pointing out the items for which fashion outranks function. Indeed, their definition of fashion is: ‘a prevailing style that makes you forget the real purpose of clothes’. Printed on glossy paper in full colour it stands out amongst the matte two-tone pink and blue of the rest of the print.
However there could have been more weight behind the take-down of physiognomy – AKA the pseudo-science of judging people based on what they look like. Here, the jovial tone doesn’t work quite so well, and comes across too closely to an instruction manual. The piece makes reference to the fact that facial recognition software is common now, however would have been stronger if it had made a point about how this technology is mis-used, or is complicit in racial profiling and insidious surveillance practices.
An elaborately illustrated piece about hashtags and internet slag is where the sarcasm of the magazine comes into its own – using the very words and phrases it is mocking to construct the feature (above).
Rounding out the mag is ‘unreccomendations’: featuring pancake-flavoured ice-cream, and ‘Literally anything anyone’s saying about the Royal Family right now’, it’s the antidote to the oversaturated spreads in many magazines trying to make us buy things: this one helpfully tells us what to avoid.
With few exceptions, Terrible People strikes the right balance between satire, sarcasm, and woke-ness. As they point out in their editorial: we can all be proper bastards every now and then. Stay terrible, people!
Social media planner: Yuting Huang
Production manager: Jennifer Link
Art director: Oriane Pawlisiak