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Y-u-k-i-k-o

We’ve been big fans of Studio Y-u-k-i-k-o ever since we first saw Flaneur magazine; turns out it’s just one example of the studio’s impressive and distinctive editorial design output. As well as designing books for the likes of photographers Matt Lambert and Ewen Spencer, Y-u-k-i-k-o are also behind the loud, colourful layout of Berlin’s latest women’s quarterly, Libertine.

We asked Y-u-k-i-k-o founders Michelle Phillips and Johannes Conrad to select three magazines for us from their collection: a new issue, an old issue and a detail from a magazine that they find especially excellent.

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New Issue: LAW
We’re really enjoying LAW magazine right now. Their name stands for ‘Lives and Works’ (which is already a nice theme right?) and they ‘aim to document the beautiful undercurrent of Britain’.

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I think part of the reason why we like it is for nostalgic reasons, Michelle is a Brit and we met there, and it just seems very well curated and tightly executed. It’s only 62 pages, the essays and interviews are concise one-pagers, but they still manage to raise some nice thoughts and the photography is sensitively slipped in-between in a way that feels like a narrative mood board rather than a portfolio review.

It also has a strong fashion element that’s down to earth, British and seamlessly woven into the editorial content. And every cover features a bespoke made clothing item that connects somehow to the issues themes. The typefaces and design are done by the guys behind Colophon Type Foundry, so it’s also beautifully sensitive in terms of typography.

So many magazines today are more like books or huge volumes of 200 or so pages, it gets impossible to read and appreciate the whole thing, so it’s very refreshing to have a magazine that’s so to-the-point, tightly curated and digestible!

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Old issue: Wet
Ok, this is an absolute gem! A few summers ago, our friend Julian Goethe curated a show at Udolpho Gallery in Berlin, an exhibition space for rare books and manuscripts run by our friend Margherita von Hohelohe with Wet magazine. We fell in love with it immediately. Margherita has the entire collection of magazines (in case you are interested in collecting it yourself…)

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It’s a magazine that's loosely based around ‘Gourmet Bathing’ and so it comes with all the fun things to do with bathing, being naked or wet… It came out when there was a big interest in Punk- and Fanzine culture, and it also covers other topics of interest like post modernist architecture and design. With its psychedelic graphic design, it really embodies the Venice Beach/ Cali New Wave. For us, it’s a magazine dream. A divine page-turner.

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And another thing… Vein
We picked up this Spanish magazine called Vein when we were in Barcelona talking at OFFF Festival last year. So we got to be honest here, we can’t read it, but that’s OK because it looks great.

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Actually it’s hard just to pick out just one detail, the whole magazine is done really well, especially for a small format. It’s like a little concert and picking one “note” doesn’t do it much justice but it features this awesome type treatment to certain words that definitely pushes our buttons. Some letters are a tiny bit stretched and others a tiny bit squashed, which has the effect where certain strokes are too thick and some too thin but somehow it balances out overall. It’s awkwardly cute but subtle enough to remain stylish.

y-u-k-i-k-o.com

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