Name : 8 Faces Date of Premiere Issue : Summer 2010
Editor-in-Chief/Founder : Elliot Jay Stocks Art Director : Elliot Jay Stocks Additional : Contributing writers: John Boardley & Christopher Murphy | Contributing designers: John Boardley & Able Parris Publisher : Elliot Jay Stocks Design Ltd.
Frequency : Bi-annual Country of Origin : England Website :http://8faces.com/
Contributed by : Elliot Jay Stocks
My interest in typography was piqued as a child when my grandfather showed me his collection of metal type. It was gently nurtured throughout my design career and then renewed with vigour just a few years ago with the launch of John Boardley’s ilovetypography.com (John wrote and designed the ‘Type Matters’ article that follows), but it wasn’t until quite recently that I really started to appreciate type. It was a logical spiral into obsession from there: in the same way that learning to play an instrument changes the way one hears music forever, a love of type opens a whole new world in which it’s impossible to look at letter in the same way ever again.
I’m not alone in feeling this way, but it seemed to me that we devotees of typography were poorly served in the offline world: printed magazines dedicated to the subject were expensive, bloated with ads, and inaccessibly highbrow. Plus, as someone working predominantly on the web, I wanted tomake something real! Something tangible that I could touch, smell, and keep forever. And I knew that other people would want the same thing. Thus, 8 Faces was born.
Everything about this project shouldn’t work: A printed magazine launched in a digital age. A niche subject with a limited audience. A large financial outlay in the aftermath of a recession. Oh, and an editor who’s never done anything like this before! But it’s my belief that passion makes up for naïvety, and that our collective love for type is a force to be reckoned with.
