Fukt #17, Words
165 x 230 mm, 226 pages
Berlin, Germany
Annual
Editor: Bjorn Hegardt
Creative director: Arianne Spanier
A throwback from the themed magazine of contemporary drawing! As you may have guessed from its dynamic concrete poetry-esque cover, this is (a reprint of) The Words Issue. In lieu of any imagery, the cover features a jumble of playful notation placeholders—‘bread crumb’, ‘dead fruit fly’ and ‘no colour for a pure and conceptual look’ among our favourites—as well as rounded corners, also helpfully denoted.
Inside, it's ‘a celebration of words’ featuring a collection of artists for whom writing is drawing, drawing is writing, and everything in between. There's the usual suspects—Sol LeWitt (whose Instructions for a Drawing open the issue), Paula Scher and Ed Ruscha—plus interviews with Stefan Marx, Annie Vought, Suzanne Treister and plenty more.
As editor-in-chief Bjørn Hegardt writes: 'In a time of fake news and populism, the world seems to have lost some ground and anti-intellectualism appears to be taking over. It’s more important than ever therefore to praise the written expression in all its forms – whether it’s been rearranged, cut, scribbled or even if it just looks like writing, all of which you can find here.' Ringing true four years later, this second edition's certainly worth a (re)visit.
On the Journal
‘Designer Ariane Spanier makes the most of a simple idea — she literally draws with words. ‘It has the designers point of view, describing elements of the cover and its production,’ she told me, ‘The words are mostly by me, and then everybody in the studio added lines here and there...’
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