Noted. (Relentlessly)
/Alex Hunting made his name as the design director of Kinfolk, the indie magazine that everyone loves, and has influenced thousands of would-be editors and art directors around the world. Which is why he was the guest on episode 17 of our sister podcast, Print is Dead (Long Live Print!). But that’s not why he’s here.
Along with Editor George Upton (also from Kinfolk), Alex has just launched Footnote, a “journal of artistic exchange,” in which writers are invited to, well, write a story which is then used as a prompt for a wide range of other writers and artists and illustrators to build and comment and add and create a magazine.
Now, this means a few things. First, Alex has no idea what will happen or how the magazine will end up. There’s planning, but there’s no flat plan, for you magazine insiders, because that comes much later in the process. And this lack of a plan includes, perhaps, potentially, the form the magazine might take. We’ll get into that.
Second, the magazine is organized via footnotes—yes, hence the name—but the footnotes are not organized as you might expect them. If there is an editorial eye, or a creative plan, it is in the arrangement of the various footnotes.
The result is baffling, stimulating, entertaining, and gorgeous. Footnote might be the most magazine-y magazine we’ve yet to present on The Full Bleed. It is a brazen experiment that plays with the idea of the magazine while being an oversized, tactile, designed editorial object. A magazine, in other words.
