Eye Magazine

When Japanese designer Yashushi Fujimoto went on a road trip with his camera and voice recorder to document ten magazine art directors, the result was this endearingly personal publication whose authenticity outweighs its shortcomings.

So many design books are now produced by ‘send us your pdfs and some text’ auto-editing that it is refreshing to see somebody actually going to meet and talk to his subjects (I think it used to be called journalism). Half of the excitement of this book is not the magazine spreads it reproduces, but Fujimoto’s voyeuristic glimpses inside the designer’s workspaces: what’s on the bookshelves, how big is their computer screen, how much did they tidy up? Profiles include Hattori Kazunari of Japanese fashion title Ryuko Tsushin, Yorgo Tloupas of car magazine Intersection and Jop van Bennekom of Fantastic Man (see Eye 61) proving an inverse relationship between tidiness of studio and quality of magazine.