No muscles, no tattoos

The author of the article, Alice Twemlow is co-chair of the SVA MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism in New York, and co-head of the MA in Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven. She has Ph.D from the History of Design and she is currently developing book about her doctoral thesis about the history of design criticism. She also writes and lectures on design culture, and has recently contributed essays to Graphisme en France (CNAP, 2016).

The Eye magazine has international reviews of graphic design and it is a quarterly printed magazine about graphic design and visual culture.  The article “No muscles, no tattoos” was first published in Eye magazine in no.61 vol. 16 2006 issue. In the article the author interviews Jop van Bennekom. The text tells a story behind what inspires Van Bennekom and why he felt the need to start his own magazines. The article goes through each Van Bennekom´s magazines and what the magazines are about, their layouts and their differences.  

The author explains that in 1990s magazines were invalided in Netherlands. That’s why if Van Bennekom wanted to pursuit his career choice and to stay in Netherlands he needed to start his own magazine. The article talks about Re-Magazine, which considered a different thematic lens to look at daily experiences before it changed direction to devoting every issue to one person. Butt is a sex magazine and in the article Van Bennekom told that he hoped the magazine Butt would had exist when he was 22 years old. He said in article: “Other gay magazines have cut-and-paste, retouched bodies unlike any you´ve ever seen in real life and certainly not like mine.” His last published magazine was Fantastic Man and it was a fashion magazine.

Job van Bennekom was a graphic design student at Arnhem Academy of Art and Design and was also interested about fashion, in the article he described that he got his most of inspiration from experimental work of fashion design students. He describes himself: “ I was addicted to otherness”.  When Butt began to produce a little money Van Bennekom started new fashion magazine, Fantastic man. I have been actually familiar with its sister magazine, the gentlewoman. Fantastic man was different of the other fashion magazines. The magazine is for stylish and style-conscious men in their mid-thirties. Van Bennekom says in the text: “I use Fantastic Man to meet my heroes”.  Fantastic man is very text oriented and can be really dry, but they are making sure that the people in the stories, quoting Van Bennekom are “fucking interesting”  and that makes you to want to read it.  What makes it very interesting to me is what kind of images they are using. The fashion magazine used images where men are actually smiling or showing example that they have wrinkles and people were mostly photographed in their own clothes.

In my opinion the article has been written for who are interested about graphic design and visual culture. The article faces also typical difficulties and decision making in design world.

References:

Twemlow, A. and Van Bennekom, J. (2006) ´No muscles, no tattoos,`Eye 61:16. Online. Available at: http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/no-muscles-no-tattoos (Accessed 11 October 2016)

(2016) http://designobserver.com/profile/alicetwemlow/103/

Available at http://67.media.tumblr.com/ac52c089f09bc4e4516111f33d1aca50/tumblr_nwzu39rlvt1rvh10go1_1280.jpg (Downloaded 13 October 2016)