We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Ahoy! Looks like the new issue of our favorite art journal is out. It’s Nice That Issue #3 is 128 pages of brainy, eye-popping fun. Numero tres includes interviews with photographer Dan Tobin Smith, a feature called “Graphics vs. Poetry” by WLYS fave Geoff McFetridge, work by Adam Voorhes and Taizo Yamamoto (among others), and an interview with the esteemed graphic designer Milton Glaser (AWESOME.)

As eternal students of the creative process, we’re equally charmed by the Flickr set documenting each step of Issue #3’s production.

Three cheers to Will Hudson, Alex Bec, Florencia Soto and the rest of the team for their impressive contribution to bookshelves everywhere. Y’all should get your orders in swiftly!

Published by the ever-innovative art blog It’s Nice That, brand new zine If Drawings Were Photographs finds designer Rob Matthews (the madman responsible for printing a 5000-page book comprised entirely of Wikipedia entries) deftly recreating a series of pseudo-abstract sketches by illustrator Tom Edwards.

The act of translating art from one medium to another can never be completely clean cut. Indeed, the unavoidable limitations of adaptation can be the very factors that lend the work an unexpected new dimension. Think of the automatic poetry that results from translating text into a foreign language and then back again. Those flaws and gaps are rarely put to good use, but in this instance, the graceful execution of Matthews’ interpretations allow the mismatched equivalences to shine and transcend both the photographs and the illustrations that inspired them. Matthews and Edwards have created something here that’s far greater than the sum of its parts.

See Also: It’s Nice That 2, a printed compilation of the blog’s featured artists.

Of all the things that the web can communicate––immediacy, simultaneity, community––one thing it’s not so good at is displaying art. Art tends to look bad on the web; or if it doesn’t look bad, it looks shrunken and diminished. This is a side effect of the medium. There’s nothing to be done about it––not yet, at least.

Which is why we badly need publications like It’s Nice That, the London-based journal of art, design, writing and most anything that fits the parameters of being creative, innovative and unabashedly fascinating. After the sold-out success of their debut issue, the outfit has released its second issue packed with introductions to undiscovered stars, brilliantly reproduced samples of their work, solid interviews and inspiring discourses on matchbox labels, rulers, and buried treasure, among other things.

The look of the journal is a combination of pure luxury and utter respect to the work within. What a relief, after the intangibility of the web, to hold a substantial printed object in one’s own hands!