CEREAL - The City Guides

Our friends from Cereal expanded their publication to include the Cereal City Guides - a beautifully curated collection of guidebooks, featuring New York, London and the “City of Lights”, Paris. Their decision to launch a series of physical guidebooks feels all too natural to us: Cereal magazine – their stunning flagship publication – is a biannual style and travel magazine. Founded by Rosa Park and Rich Stapleton in 2012, the publication is divided into city-specific chapters, with each section comprising stories in places, people and products. 

What makes these city guides so beautiful is not only their clean aesthetic, refined tone-of-voice or striking photography, but the fact that Rosa and Rich have researched, visited, photographed, edited and designed all of the content themselves. In this way, these guidebooks are a reflection of their very personal choices in hotels, cafes, restaurants, shops and places to see.

'If the food is top notch, so too is the space that accompanies it. You’ll soon notice that our version of the perfect trip is woven in with an understated flair and a penchant for grand landscapes – both natural and manmade.'

Each guide features a tightly edited and discerning selection of their favourite places, alongside a stunning photo essay of the city and personal essays of some truly inspiring people who call these cities their home. Most importantly, the guides are created to befit Cereal’s readers and modern travellers alike: What you will not find is a list of 30+ different restaurants to choose from, but those 5 or 6 carefully selected recommendations that Rosa and Rich believe to be unique, interesting and enjoyable. 24 select venues on 128 pages. Printed in full colour on uncoated paper. £8.

LES OTHERS - Vol. 02 'The Hidden Issue'

Although Paris based Les Others was already launched back in 2012 as a digital-only platform, we came across this great, bilingual – French / English – publication only recently. Les Others describes itself as “an inspirational media dedicated to outdoor, travel and photography lovers.” And this statement couldn’t be any truer!

About a year ago, in early 2015, the guys from Les Others decided to launch their print issue – a biannual, carefully curated magazine with inspiring stories told by passionate outdoor lovers and adventurers, including travel diaries, interviews and beautiful photography. Volume II – The Hidden Issue – celebrates the unseen, the unknown, and the undiscovered. Driven by their curiosity, 20 contributors from around the world explore the hidden and the invisible. And you’ll be taken across the globe, from France to Norway, to Slovenia, Indonesia and Minneapolis, and from Italy to Bolivia. So, turn the pages and delve into their stories. 144 pages. French / English. Printed in France. Offset-printed and perfectly bound. Full colour, uncoated paper. 16 Euros. 

DIETER RAMS - 'Less and More'

‘Less and More’ captures the impressive legacy and design philosophy of one of the most influential designers of our time – Dieter Rams. Edited by product design experts Klaus Klemp and Keiko Ueki-Polet, the book visualises and describes the timeless quality of Rams’ design ethos on 808 pages. Mainly known for his work at Braun, and true to the principle of ‘less, but better’, Rams defined our fundamental understanding of what design is today. 

This understanding is often summed up in the ten rules of design that he created more than thirty years ago, referred to as ‘the ten commandments’:

// Good design is innovative. 

// Good design makes a product useful. 

// Good design is aesthetic. 

// Good design helps a product to be understood. 

// Good design is unobtrusive. 

// Good design is honest. 

// Good design is durable. 

// Good design is consistent to the last detail. 

// Good design is environmentally friendly. 

// Good design is as little design as possible.

Less and More is the reference book of Rams’ work and features images of hundreds of his products as well as his sketches and models  - from Braun stereo systems and electric shavers to the chairs and shelving systems that he created for Vitsœ. In addition to the rich visual presentation of his designs, the book contains texts by international design experts that explain how the work was created, and what this means in a contemporary context. Published by Gestalten.

KINFOLK - Vol. 16 'The Essentials Issue'

Kinfolk’s sixteenth issue, The Essentials Issue, explores the different meanings of life’s fundamentals, the things that bring us back to our cores, and shows how we can implement them into our daily lives.

'Instead of determining how little we can live with, it’s about working out what we cannot live without.'

In my opinion, the excerpts taken from Peter Block’s book Community: The Structure of Belonging (pp. 49-59) is one of the most compelling and relevant articles of this issue. Moving away from the tangible concept of belonging, it discusses the ‘esoteric’ side of belongingness: a deap-seated desire we have to belong to something larger than ourselves, suggesting ways in which we can create a stronger sense of togetherness by fostering genuine support through our communities. 160 pages, offset-printed and perfect bound, full colour on uncoated paper. Printed in Canada. 

Photographed by Ali Baï for GOODS WE LIKE

C-HEADS - Vol. 33 'Summer. Lovers and Strangers'

Founded in 2006 by Guggenberger sisters Christine and Sigrun, independent Vienna/ Berlin based magazine C-HEADS gives us a snapshot of youth culture, bringing together the full creative range out of photography, fashion, music, travel, sex, art and culture. Made by women.

'Summer. Lovers and strangers. We might always remain strangers. But this summer we just want to be lovers.'

C-HEADS Magazine Issue #33 is dedicated to summer, to love, to lovers and strangers; the love for yourself, for someone else, or for any other little thing that exists. We can gain it but we can never possess it. Once again, the C-HEADS team put great value on beautiful, aesthetic photography, strong emotions and great narrative. Limited to 1200 copies.

Photographed by Ali Baï for GOODS WE LIKE

KINFOLK - Vol. 15 'The Entrepreneurs Issue'

Founded in 2011, Kinfolk is now one of the leading independent lifestyle magazines for young creative professionals. The quarterly magazine maintains an intriguing and vibrant contributor base from around the world. As a ‘slow lifestyle’ publication it seeks to explore the different ways for readers to simplify their lives, cultivate community and spend more time with their friends and family.

'When buzzing through a sped-up world where there are always battles to be won and emails to be answered, learning to slow down in the workplace is imperative to both our productivity and happiness.'
- Carl Honoré, In Praise of Slowness

Volume Fifteen – the Entrepreneurs Issue – explores the motivation and innovation that drives the spirit of entrepreneurship. Nathan Williams and Georgia Frances King explain that “When we want to make a change in the world, we can sometimes feel pressured to keep achieving when what we really need is a break to slow down and focus on our personal goals. After all, it can be hard toeing the priority line between work and play.” As much as Kinfolk addresses the choices we make outside of work hours, the same mindful attention does this issue give to the time spent improving our professional selves. A great issue, and a must read.

Photographed by Ali Baïlon and Gladys Fabie for GOODS WE LIKE

ALPINE MODERN - Vol. 02 'Beginnings'

Alpine Modern is a quarterly magazine that explores living, architecture and design in mountain regions with the aim of elevating modern design and lifestyles of mountain communities worldwide. The young Boulder, Colorado based team believes in the “emerging design ethos of a more natural minimalism and refined life entwined with the outdoors”, a shared passion that seems to boil down to two things: beautiful design and, the mountains.

'Each morning provides a new chance to redo and renew, the opportunity to be better, be more, or just be.'
- Richard Foy, Iss.02, p.044

In their second publication, the free-of-advertising magazine explores ‘mornings and new beginnings in the mountains’ on 132 pages through stunning photography, inspiring stories and a clean, minimal layout. Printed in USA, on uncoated heavy-weight paper. Images by Ali Baï and Gladys Fabie. 

RICHARD KILROY - 'Menswear Illustrations'

Menswear Illustration is a carefully curated book which showcases the diversity and creativity that defines contemporary menswear illustration. Given today’s vibrancy of contemporary men’s fashion around the world, illustrator Richard Kilroy has drawn together a selection of some of the most interesting, important and influential menswear illustrators around. The list includes drawings of Cédric Rivrain, sketches of Richard Haines, and works of Donald Urquhart, Jean-Philippe Delhomme, Matthew Attard Navarro and many more. Kilroy focuses solely on menswear illustrations in an attempt to highlight those nuances that differentiate the craft from illustrating e.g. womenswear. “It could be asked why this book should focus on menswear, when it might be more rational to reflect on illustration as a whole ... but when we examine those artists who concentrate on menswear, we find particular emphases, moods and styles that are idiosyncratic to their craft.” Ranging from interpretative to photorealistic works, Menswear Illustration features a wide variety of visual styles from watercolours and sketches to pencil drawings.

Richard Kilroy is a fashion illustrator, writer and editor, is a tutor at renowned Central Saint Martins and guest lecturer at Royal College of Arts, London. Kilroy’s clients include Christian Dior, Canali and numerous magazines.

Photographed by Simon Freund for GOODS WE LIKE

Norman Behrendt - burning down the house

A photographic study of Berliner graffiti writers. The photobook burning down the house offers an in depth look at Berlin’s graffiti writer scene for the first time. Against the backdrop of publicly accessible and non-accessible surfaces being continually written upon, a constant presence of the subject in the media in relation to the surveillance of public space, the increasing costs of removal on behalf of transport companies and the accompanying harsher penalties for graffiti offences, the author Norman Behrendt has over a five year period approached the subject of graffiti writing in his own way. Detached from stereotypes and with the conscious decision to forgo the depiction of graffiti, Behrendt aims to introduce the anonymous authors of Berlin’s public space and give a human face to the often-discussed subject of the
illegal writing on the wall.

Instead of accompanying the graffiti writers on their nocturnal adventures and photographing them in action at the scene of their work’s execution, Behrendt decided on quieter alternative — a portrait.