Stroke 2012 - 5

"Handsome is as handsome does"... so goes the sixteenth-century English proverb. What Handsome Magazine does in its pilot edition distributed at the Stroke Urban Art Fair 2012 is pack seventy pages with six articles portraying artists and designers, covering trends and fashion... all with a graphic refinement but also with a hint of self-deprecating humour.


This is a zeen for readers of Monocle, perhaps, but those who find that Tyler Brulée's magazine often tends to take itself far too seriously.


The publication seems to be the outcome of many sessions of drinking coffee at the Bellavista Bar in Zurich... just a stone's throw from where I had many of my best ideas at Krönenhalle, in the world's only brasserie with paintings by Braques and Chagalls, Miró and Picasso on the walls.


Was that really forty years ago? But even today I treasure flyers from two or three exhibitions I visited. And, of course, I learned that Helvetica is more a religion than a font!