Eye Magazine

For journalist and magazine editor James Brown, his archive was a series of boxes in a lock-up garage. Zine Age Kicks (designed by Matthew Sankey, self-published via @jamesjamesbrown, £19.95) is that archive unpacked, spread on the floor and photographed in the ‘so-chaotic-it’s-good’ style that characterised his most famous creation, the original and best lad’s mag Loaded.

Subtitled ‘visual evidence of a life in music and magazines’, it is a picture-and-caption companion to Animal House, Brown’s autobiography. From early childhood toy trains to overlapping magazine spreads (with Post-it notes marking the pages to shoot), the book documents most of Brown’s obsessions.

Tantalising early dummies for Loaded reveal the transformation that art directors Steve Reid and Jon Link (see Eye 75) brought to the project, while pages and covers (top) from GQ show what happened when Brown met the Condé Nast publishing machine.

Simon Esterson, art director of Eye, London

First published in Eye no. 110 vol. 28, 2026