Next it was time to look at another magazine form which aesthetic inspiration will be taken, and implied through the designing stage. The magazine in question is Brick Magazine of which centres all of its content around Hip-Hop culture and what it entails. To fully understand the purpose of Brick first it was important to look at an interview with the chief design of the magazine in order to understand the rationale for the magazine as a whole.
There are so many stereotypes and cliches surrounding hip-hop, which often trickle down into how it’s presented across all forms of media. Was it your intention to break away from those dated ideas and present the genre in a way that better represents the current state of hip-hop?
Absolutely. It’s always been about more than just the music, but especially now, when hip-hop is so relevant and has infiltrated all these other areas, it was about the magazine representing that properly, as I don’t think there’s another platform that currently does. I think that was also a big decision behind the design of the magazine, where we didn’t want it to become something that looked like everything else. I love the ’90s magazines like XXL and The Source — and I was inspired by the iconic imagery that you’d find in them back then. For example, you could take that Shawn Mortensen image of Tupac in the strait-jacket and put in on a cover today because it’s just that timeless. And it’s a shame, because I feel like that whole approach to how hip-hop was originally portrayed was lost in the early ’00s when the music shifted and became more commercial. I think that’s where it became less about the individual personalities and is also where a lot of the common stereotypes came from. With BRICK, I want to get back to that notion of documenting timeless moments in hip-hop history, whilst also delving into these huge personalities that embody it, rather than focusing on promoting someone’s upcoming tour or mixtape release.
It’s like what you were saying about the ’90s magazines and how they almost act as a time capsule of where hip-hop was at then, BRICK gives an honest account of where the genre is currently at and documents how the culture has evolved to date…
I hope so. I mean, we don’t have any album reviews or anything like that in there because, to me, that is irrelevant. I hate it when I get a music magazine and the back third is entirely reviews because music is so personal. Our Editor-in-Chief, Grant Brydon, just wrote a really great piece for RWD on the new Kendrick album, where he basically said that he’s not going to review it as people should just take that record for the art that it is.
I’d say the design of the magazine certainly achieves its goal of breaking down preconceptions of what a hip-hop magazine, or more generally, what a music magazine should look like in 2015. Like you said, it’s instantly more inclusive of the culture’s diversity. Aside from what you’ve already covered, what else inspired the distinctly visual approach?We just wanted to make it as contemporary as possible. Often, as a girl, I’ve found hip-hop magazines to be typically quite masculine. Not that it’s ever stopped me buying one, but I wanted BRICK to be something that wasn’t of that tone. Something super accessible, that literally anyone could pick up and want to read. I also love pictures, so I guess I just wanted to make something that looked nice and was full of photos, as well as having something worthwhile to say.
With your experience as a photographer who’s shot all sorts of hip-hop artists, from Kendrick to Nas, alongside tons of fashion work, was it kind of a no brainer to bring the two influences together in the form of BRICK?I feel like I’ve been really lucky in that, from doing fashion photography, I’ve met so many amazing people and have become familiar with some awesome photographers and their work. Music photography and fashion photography were two separate entities, but I now feel like music and fashion are so linked together, more than ever before. You’re seeing more and more musicians on the covers of fashion magazines, from all genres. So yeah, it was about bringing together the work of photographers that I think are amazing and saying, “Hey, can you do your thing, but with this hip-hop artist as the subject instead?” — and that’s pretty much how it all came together. For example, with Neil Bedford, who shot our cover with Wiz, he’s not a big hip-hop fan at all, and I think there’s something really great about that. In the nicest way, he doesn’t care that he’s shooting Wiz Khalifa or have any preconceived idea of how he should shoot him. He’s simply out to get the best photographs in his own style, capturing the personality of whoever he’s shooting. That’s what makes it interesting for me.
I’m personally super glad that BRICK has come to life as a magazine rather than simply another blog or website. Firstly, was it always going to be a physical publication and secondly, what’s your view on the value of print media in 2015?
I always wanted it to be printed in some capacity. When I first started out with the idea, it was just going to be a small zine, but the project kinda just grew and grew until it became this. I’m also a huge image hoarder and I’ve still got boxes of magazine pages and photos I collected when I was younger, and I guess I want BRICK to have that same effect on people. I just want people to value it and love it as an object. If you go on Tumblr, you can type in “Wiz Khalifa” and scroll through 5000 images of him, but there’s so much more value in something when it’s physical. It’s a completely different experience. I think it stems from being a photographer as well, because seeing your work in print is so much more rewarding than it being solely online.
I think it’s the notion that things are so throwaway on the Internet, or even in excess. It’s also the context in which an image is used that’s important. Like, you can go take an incredible photo and put it on Tumblr and get a million reblogs, and that’s cool, but it’s always going to have far more impact and weight behind it if it’s immortalized in print – as part of a thoughtful layout, with different design treatments setting the scene, or supporting text to embellish its meaning, you know?
Exactly. It’s more of a final product and it just makes sense, visually, when we’re looking to tell stories and create an experience in the way that BRICK intends to. It’s also an ownership thing too. Like you were saying about Tumblr, I’ve found my own photos on there before with all these notes on and I haven’t even posted it myself yet, let alone been credited for it. And I’m not so fussed about people knowing that I took a certain photo, that’s not the issue, it’s more that people simply don’t care. That’s what sucks. The image is so readily available that people simply don’t care. It devalues the whole thing and it just becomes this anonymous, disconnected entity. So yeah, it’s about getting away from all of that and going back to zoning out with a magazine in your own time, at your own pace. Something that you can pick up or put down whenever you like and come back to time and time again. That’s the experience I want people to have.
Looking at Brick for research leading in to the practical half of the project was very beneficial as it outlined a number of aspects that would definitely be in consideration in the designing stage of the publication off the back of the same design decisions made by the chief designer.
Brick's whole purpose is centred around the fact that the designer wanted to contrast the personality of the early Hip-Hop magazines through styling and imagery and contrast this with a modern and clean aesthetic going against a trend that occurred in the 2000's in which all of the personality within Hip-Hop magazines was lost with the commercialisation of the genre. This contrast of vintage aesthetics and principles with clean/modern pleasing design to create something never done before is definitely a major aspect of my whole design concept and will be an important aspect to consider.
With the vintage magazines paying homage to how the scene was at that time, Brick's purpose was to display where the scene is at now, employing the personality necessary for music as expressive as Hip-Hop.With a major concentration on making the magazine as contemporary as possible to reflect the expansion of the genre ensuring a perfect comparison of pleasing design and photography with having something important to say within the magazine.
The final aspect of research taken from looking at Brick is the importance of the finished product itself, with the internet at the stage its at we can access whatever we would like on there, with the creation of a publication its much more of a concentration on actually having a physical final product that people can hold and read, like times of old.
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