Adobe debuts this month Proxy, a quarterly PDF magazine created to help designers “get in touch with and be inspired by peers and experts in the design community.” Adobe’s original foray into magazine publishing was its printed run of Adobe Magazine from 1995 to 2000. An archive of the PDF versions can be found here. In 2002, Adobe’s Pacific division began publishing an online magazine of the same name. Archives are here.
It’s the 10th year anniversary of Giant Robot magazine. I remember picking up the first issue of Giant Robot at Tower Records, which was back then one of the few mainstream places one can buy underground zines. The first issue, with the sleeping sumo wrestler on the cover as you see me holding above, was a true zine. Its irreverent pages, filled with esoteric Asian-American cultural references, were photocopied and stapled together by hand. By the fourth issue (the one on the right above), it had acquired a sleek 4-color cover but kept its interior pages rough-looking and in black and white (screened at 60 lpi). Nowadays, the magazine is a glossy, full-color rag but it has somehow stayed true to the spirit of its zine days.
Dear Blog Reader,
Enclosed is a photograph showing the blog author and someone who appears to be Lemony Snicket within the same vicinity. The sea of young folk in the photograph is identified by The Daily Cornholyo as the Lowell High School Choir circa 1987. Mr. Snicket aka Daniel Handler was purportedly the student assistant director of the choir. The blog author, posing as a baritone but truly could not read musical notes, is shown sporting a mullet, a hairstyle fashionable among the clueless in the late 1980s.*
April’s been a busy month. The spring cleaning that began last winter is still ongoing. A few yard sales have come and gone but the garage seems as full as ever.
Some of the design books pictured above are seriously dated but I have a hard time letting go of them (do you think it’s time to toss Fresh Ideas in Promotion from 1994?). It was difficult parting with 4-years’ worth of MacAddict magazines and accompanying CDs (from year one to four). But I know they’re in good hands. I sent them all in a balikbayan box to a worthy recipient, Ernie, who is webmaster of PhilMUG and Apple employee no., uh, 8123? (Oh yeah, he’s got a personal blog now too. Check it out.)
Look at what I unearthed while doing some spring cleaning in the garage several days ago: a BusinessWeek magazine dated November 26, 1984 with Steve Jobs and John Sculley on the cover.
A year and a half before this issue appeared in the newsstands Jobs lured Sculley from Pepsi to become the CEO of Apple with this line, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” A year after the issue came out, Jobs stepped down after a boardroom drama had ensued that left Sculley at the helm. Sculley eventually resigned from Apple in 1993 and Jobs, the prodigal son, came back in 1997. Ironically, Steve Jobs is now in partnership with Pepsi to promote Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Hmmm, is that a symbolic sea of “sugared water” behind Jobs and Sculley?
