Quick flick – Justified

There are loads of magazines that started life as blogs. Step forward It’s Nice That, Plog, Betty… it seems that blogging is becoming something of a gateway drug for magazine making.

And now another name can be added to the list. Issue number one of Justified landed on my desk on Monday and I was taken straight away with the cover. At first I thought it was a food magazine, and have to admit I was just a little bit disappointed to discover that it is in fact a showcase magazine for students and graduate designers, photographers and architects.

Very often these showcase magazines can seem somehow exploitative, filling their pages with the work of others without really doing much to add to or contextualise it. But Justified has a lovely understated inventiveness that manages to add to the overall value of the work while simultaneously getting out of the way.

I love the way they use the blue frame around and on top of pictures, and a quick visit to the blog shows the frame is central to what they do there as well. A simple device that works well in print and on the blog? Editor and designer Joshua Ogden has clearly thought this one out.

He’s also kept it short at 32 pages and very simple – great images are interspersed with quick artist interviews and bits of advice for young creatives from Tom and Phil at Mat Dolphin Studio, who seem to be somehow involved in the magazine.

I’m already a massive fan of Justified. And I’m really looking forward to seeing what issue two brings with it.