It's Nice That – Issue #1

Although I assume that the most of my countless readers already know the blog It's Nice That. Nevertheless:

Launched in April 2007, It's Nice That aims to document and inspire creative talent.

Recently their project turned two. To celebrate their birthday adequately Alex Bec and Will Hudson used as an oportunity to select the hottest content they posted during the last two years and to turn it into a kind of magazine: It's Nice That – Issue #1.

On opening of the mag the minimalistic cover that provides an overview of the contents revealed a personal and handwritten «Thanks!» by Will and Alex. «Tendosynovitis» suddenly came into my mind.

The publication contains – as already mentioned – a kind of best of taken from the blog. So there also are features and inteviews besides the posts on cool stuff the bloggers stumbled upon on their journeys through the web.

Alex and Will decided to use different typographic concepts for each type of article to meet the concerns of the particular kind of content. Above and below you see the layouts of the usual short posts. It's nice how they varied the way they handled the images.




The mostly longer texts of the features are set in two column layouts in aid of a better flow of reading – also supported by the use of a serife font.

I'm really split over the layout of the interviews. The pages are nice in view of their impression as a whole. But the very expanded blocks of justified text and the – intentional placed – holes to separate the question-answer pairs from each other look a bit unfavorably in my eyes.

Altogether it's a real nice publication. Here and there some typographic improvements could be made. Even if I am a fan of more experimental approaches I acknowledge that the focus of this publication is set on documenting interesting blog articles instead of «restaging» them. In the matter of content: Hey, it's a best of by It's Nice That! Great works, nice visual impressions and interesting texts and features. Honestly, I got jealous a bit!

As I did in my post on Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008 I have to ask the question for the purpose of turning a blog into a printed form. Yeah, I know it's nice to touch a physical object and Alex and Will accommodated my passion for materiality with the choice of the paper used. It seems we still mistrust the internet in view of its durability. The physical existence of a book or magazine we can put on our bookshelves seems more reliable to us than the transient placelessness of digital data. I wonder whether it could be interpeted as a reversal: formerly websites have been established as an extension of the print media. Now it seems printed matter is becoming a form of manifest destillate of the disembodied cloud of online contents. Maybe it's because of the aspect of collecting or man's need of appropriating physical expressions of his continously passing lifeworld.