Private Collection: Teen Angst Journals
Life before blogging with five years of journals, dug up and explored.

What I (w)could buy, if I won
Real estate, art auctions and gadget drool, using "The Secret" method of winning.

Looking Back
Late 90s into the early 00s, lookbooks worth speaking about.

Tipping Point: Alexander Wang
Will 2010 be the year that the designer secures his standing within fashion's elite?

The Family, Richard Avedon.
The uncompromising austerity of the plain white background leaves no room to hide.

Invitations Only, Fashion Shows
Arc brings you these show invites from the early 2000s

Netflix Instants: Arc's Picks
Watching without a disc has become increasingly easier, and better. Watch these now.

Fashionable Anagram: Balmain
The creative chaos of a sole visionary is stolen and transformed into a global fashion brand.

1972. Advertising was great, advertising had its clever wit, its beautiful typography and over-saturated colors with an enchanted lifestyle of sport and beauty. 2010. Turns out, it also had misinformation. Tobacco advertising is hard to find these days, unless its those The Truth ads, that are most likely paid for by Philip Morris. “Big Tobacco” has been a major target for all things bad over the past twenty years and yet still, it’s not the number one killer. I wonder if 20 years from now, we’ll still be watching advertisements for new triple-pounder cheeseburgers exclaiming, “I’m Lovin’ It” or watching the beautiful footage of a car driving across a vacant stretch of sun drenched desert. Each of those industries cause quite a few deaths, but there’s more money to be made in diet products and all things related to car crashes.

Here are some tobacco campaigns from Life Magazine, all of which come from the same December, 1972 issue. Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking is Dangerous to Your Health.

David James Associates have been quietly defining the aesthetic of the zeitgeist for over twenty years. This statement reads under the about section on the davidjames-outofprint.co.uk website. They have been under the radar in terms of a company but their work speaks loudly. The campaigns for Prada since the early 90s and countless other Miu Miu campaigns as well. The London based agency has most recently designed AnotherMan magazine, which showcases a volume of typographical exploration twice a year. Below are some of the early campaigns and even some show invites for Prada and Miu Miu.

For the past three decades, Apple has prided itself on being one of the only advertisers to make the justified claim that their product speaks for itself. In much the same way that Irving Penn’s Clinique ads operated, the commercials proudly spoke ‘we don’t need to spin a story here, we’ve already got what we need’. When the need for a little humanity came along, we were given extreme personification with spinning iMacs that expectantly stuck their tongue, rewarding us for making the connection. When an actual human hit the scene, he wasn’t really given a scene, just some more white space. So why now the abundance of beige? With their latest iPad commercials, it’s as if Apple wants us to take a look at their product, then a look at their generic styling, and then come to the conclusion that what we are being sold is, well, pretty generic. Because, after all, what does the product itself have left to say?

What about all that space around the image. Are they losing money, not filling up that space too… Maybe it’s where we can actually see ourselves. It’s like a small patch of air that we can breathe, be, become, become something, become someone. Without that tiny slither or pooling of white, there’s no seeing through to the next page, or seeing into ourselves. A page full of face says look at me, not look at yourself. We’ve saved this space for you. We left it really small too, because these jeans will make you so skinny that you’ll be able to fit. Right here next to me, next to us. You’ll be just like us.