The Master Builder: Talking with Ken Briggs by Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, is a slim (28 pp. plus covers) volume, the size (and look and feel, with coated and uncoated stocks) of a typical Briggs NT programme. It comprises an interview with Briggs, a short biography and portrait, plenty of pictures (24 in colour) of his pioneering posters and programmes for the theatre in the 1960s and 70s, and a detail of Briggs’ slide archive, carefully labelled with Dymo tape.

When asked about his structured, asymmetrical booking forms for the theatre, Briggs claims ‘I didn’t care about beauty or the lack of it. They are purely typographic,’ then goes on to explain his colour system: ‘from warm colours in winter to cool colours in summer: red, ochre, purple, bright blue and so on.’ Which is why he was known as the colourist.

Born in 1943 in southern Germany, Manfred Eicher dedicated his life early on to music, learning violin as a child, and studying double bass and classical music at the Academy in Berlin. On parallel tracks, he pursued an equally traditional self-education in jazz: through relatives in America, records bought in G.I. stores, The Voice of America, listening to Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard, playing double bass in German jazz bands and with visiting musicians including Marion Brown, Leo Smith and Paul Bley.

In 1969, a meeting with the American jazz pianist and composer Mal Waldron led to Eicher’s first impromptu production and official release, Free at Last. The immediate success of the record beckoned for more, encouraging Eicher to move backstage and from then on to dedicate his life to finding and producing new music rather than performing. On the outskirts of Munich, with little financial backing, less strategy and no experience in production or managing a record label, Manfred Eicher launched ECM Records as a platform for jazz, a primarily American phenomenon on its wane.

Selected Publications & Print Ephemera from the LACE Archives 1978–2008.

From its founding in 1978, LACE — Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions — was a pivotal, artist-run organization committed to presenting the work of Southern California artists and highlighting bleeding-edge work. Both a treasure-trove and a grab-bag, this book reproduces a wealth of archival material from LACE’s first three decades. Flyers, postcards, memoirs, catalogs, posters, invitations: the editors have chosen an engrossing selection, including well-known names like Lita Albuquerque, Paul McCarthy, Red Grooms and Mike Kelley, and lesser-known but equally worthy artists. As Liz Kotz writes in her introduction, for a new generation of art historians, movements like Minimalism, Happenings and Conceptual Art are just names; the archive allows them to experience the history first-hand. And if you were around at the time, this book is as deeply satisfying as going through that box of stuff you have kept since college days.

A Curious Catalogue is a skateboard product catalogue of pencil drawn anti-graphics, spin-art wheels, and slalom gemstones. It was designed to take a romantic and fantastic vision of a skateboard company and make it ‘real’. Michael Leon was inspired by the naïve wonder he experienced as a young skateboarder, which he juxtaposes with an elegant, yet dry, catalogue sales format. The result is a carefree and poetic narrative carried by a range of imagined products.

Michael Leon was raised in late 80s, early 90s skateboard culture. His work lives in a unique place between the worlds of art and art direction. He often uses the language of graphic design to create meaning through sculpture, paintings, videos, and editions. While still in high school, Michael designed his first pro model skateboard for New Deal Skateboards. 19 years later, he continues to design for his skateboard company Stacks, as well as creating artwork and art directing collaborative projects.

Both the future and the past are mysterious places filled with hidden delights and lurking dangers. This is a poster-magazine about traveling in time as well as in (cyber)space. The third manifestation of PWR will be revealed shortly.

Gothenburg, Sweden, Earth, Internet.

Both the future and the past are mysterious places filled with hidden delights and lurking dangers. This is a poster-magazine about traveling in time as well as in (cyber)space. The second manifestation of PWR will be revealed shortly.

26 November 2009, Gothenburg, Sweden, Earth, Internet.

After Modern History is a report on world events that re-edits the news of the day by linking together images according to a totally idiosyncratic perspective of pattern recognitions and typologies. After Modern History lifts photos from daily newspapers and re-organizes disparate, often atomized subjects into newly imagined affinities. For most people caught on the hard end of luck, the newspaper can be a lonely place. But in this second draft of history, bad news is no longer so isolated. There is no dateline.

Bicycles is a collection of newspaper clippings where bicycles appear incidentally to the photograph subject.

Throughout his career as a designer, Karel Martens has made artistic (uncommissioned) work. In his early days he used sheets of paper, cut to make reliefs. Then he began to make prints from Meccano, metal plates and washers, and other found objects. These prints were made in very small numbers, or were perhaps one-offs. They were studies in form and colour, done as experiments or intended as gifts to friends. The work was very much in the Dutch tradition of experimental printing (the artist H.N.Werkman is the great exemplar here). But Martens kept this work largely apart from his graphic design work. He has occasionally shown it in exhibitions, and some pieces were published in the book Karel Martens: printed matter / drukwerk.

This is the first publication devoted to Martens’s prints. It is made in association with the printer Lecturis, in Eindhoven, and is produced to the highest quality. Bound in Chinese/Japanese fashion, like the first Martens book, it has a strong quality as an object. The main text in the book is an essay by the English designer Paul Elliman: ‘The world as a printing surface’. Dutch critic and teacher Carel Kuitenbrouwer provides a short introduction. The book is designed by Hans Gremmen, under the supervision of Karel Martens, at the Werkplaats Typografie in Arnhem.

The exquisite paintings of record covers and spines by Los Angeles-based artist Dave Muller give us a glimpse into his cultural identity. I Like Your Music I Love Your Music presents a selection of recent works dealing with the ways in which we construct our cultural identities through music — which he represents as a network of aesthetic, social and personal exchanges. Muller’s multifaceted practice includes curating, cultural agitating, DJing and record collecting — his collection tops out at 15,000 digital albums. He is particularly well known for his multitextured installations that blend his own sound tracks with his visual work. He is represented by Blum & Poe in Los Angeles and was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. This volume is published in collaboration with Spain’s Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), and includes an essay by artist and Director of New York’s White Columns, Matthew Higgs.