I co-authored 100 Classic Graphic Design Journals believing that print publishing was on life support, and design mags would be among the first to die. And I was dead wrong. I won’t go into exactly how wrong, but suffice to say, I’ve written about quite a few design journals that have survived the “end of print” epidemic, and others that have launched from scratch in the years since that book was published in 2014.
Among my favorites is BLAG: Better Letters Magazine, which challenged my once-impeccable prescience twice. It is printed on a printing press and it is devoted to another false prediction, the demise of collectors’ and scholars’ interest in painted, carved, engraved and otherwise handmade signs—specifically the letterforms thereof. I admit to severe myopia, particularly since I wrote introductions for a couple of books on the subject prior to making my predictions.
BLAG is a seasonal quarterly edited by Sam Roberts, a maven antiquarian and practicing sign man. His UK-based journal of “adventures in sign painting,” as he dubs it, has become more international, more local and more historical, contemporary and generally exploratory than when he started with Issue 1 in 2021.
The current issue includes a smorgasbord of tasty treats: “Sign Painting for the Silver Screen,” DIY street signs in Ribirao, Brazil, “Magic on Main Street at the American Sign Museum,” “75 Years of A.S. Handover: Brushmakers of Distinction,” Ireland’s mosaic tile signs, the Chicago’s Beverly Sign Co., “The Secrets of Fileteado Porteño,” as well as trade stories on “Interowriting,” profiles of letter freaks, roundups of books and websites and social media, specimens from Cambodia, India, Cuba and more … and, oh yeah, the best in sign painters’ business cards. And if that’s not enough to whet your winter thirst for signs, there are alphabets, trade tricks and methods, and new tool reviews.
Sign painting and lettering have not devolved entirely to LED display readouts and plastic-not-so-fantastic modular alphabets. And we have Sam Roberts and BLAG to thank for celebrating the past and honoring the present.
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