Juxtapoz Magazine: Issue #1 to #100

Back in 1994 Robert Williams, the Godfather of the Low-Brow art movement, founded the art and culture magazine Juxtapoz. In an era where magazines start and fail in a heartbeat Juxtapoz has managed to keep itself going for 15 years and is celebrating the release of its 100th issue. Nearly impossible to find an actual printed issue #1 these days (I managed to find one finally on eBay), you can view and read the entire first issue of Juxtapoz at Issuu.com.

I purchased my first issue of Juxtapoz (issue #4) while working as a screen printer in Ft. Collins, Colorado in 1995. My mind was blown by the detail and craftsmanship of the art presented in those pages. Not all of the art was to my taste but I still respected the talent that produced the pieces. Being a fine artist as well I was heavily influenced by Juxtapoz and the artists it promoted in the magazine.

After three years in Colorado it was time to move on and having been a loyal reader of Juxtapoz for those three years I was destined to travel further west to Los Angeles where a lot of the art in the magazine was being created. I needed to be there, tossed into the mix of low-riders, Latino culture, the beach and west coast style. It was paradise and while living a block south of Sunset and a block east of Doheny, I was able to surround myself with the sound and vision that drew me to the magazine in the first place.

I got to meet Robert Williams at the Juxtapoz 10th Anniversary Party at 111 Minna in San Francisco five years ago. I don’t usually get star struck, but in this case I was standing next to a living legend, hero of Zap Comics, established low-brow art icon and founder of the best art and culture magazine in print today. He snapped a photo with me and we got to chat for a few minutes before Mark Ryden walked over to say hello.

Today Juxtapoz is run by editor Matt Revelli and has a new visual identity. There are two cover versions, one for subscribers and one at newsstands for all the collectors out there. The interior pages have a cleaner design, there is more content and more advertising but the true vibe of the magazine continues. Juxtapoz has grown up in the last 15 years, having started as a art and culture magazine dedicated to introducing the world to a movement who up until then was underground and obscure, it is now a grown up art and culture magazine continuing to blow minds while introducing us to the artists who are making waves in the New-Brow art movement of the 21st century.

A Tale of Two Infographics

Facebook

The Sunday New York Times had two articles on social media: a Facebook story in the “business” section and a bit about Twitter in the “style” section. Both were accompanied by compelling infographics.

The Facebook graphic, called “The Road to 200 Million,” employs lines and dots to show how people interact with their networks.

The Twitter graphic, titled “Strange Webfellows,” uses a series of lines and celebrity photographs to illustrate random celebrity interconnections in the Twittersphere.

Twitter

They were each so perfectly geared to their section and audience. The FB graphic didn’t just inform but furthered our understanding of how people in online communities interact. The Twitter graphic entertained more in the vein of a supermarket tabloid than it was informative. It is fun to know, for example, that MC Hammer and Governor Schwarzenegger are following one-another’s tweets but it doesn’t serve to help us understand the world of Twitter, or beyond. They also remind that if we fall too deep into the vortex of these social media webs we might become nothing more than a series of dots and arrows.

Each graphic however evokes visual texture in that they layer incredibly simple visual elements to entertain and inform. They are not your father’s bar graph.

Mixed Breed

Let’s face it, if our blog Visual Texture was a dog, it would be a total mixed-breed mutt. We have experience in and exposure to many aspects of design, however the blog is still figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up, and so are we.

They say opposites attract, right? Maybe that is why we love Grain Edit. This blog/blogger knows exactly who it is and where it is going–and it shows.

Grain edit is focused on classic design work from the 1950s-1970s and contemporary designers that draw inspiration from that time period

The displays of art are delicious; the write-ups are quick, well-informed and educational; and we groan with envy when we think of the museum and eye-candy quality of Grain Edit’s bookshelves, walls and coffee tables.

[title] does not define the form

If Web 2.0 can be this inspiring, we’re positively giddy about 3.0.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g]

BLU – South American Urban Art

This is one of the coolest, most clever combinations of wall art and animation I’ve ever seen.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4&hl=en&fs=1]