8

Plastikcomb Magazine
ISSUE
No. 8

A partially constructed concrete wall or barrier with white and gray sections, viewed from a distance with a dark background.
Colorful magazine cover with a yellow star, collage of images, and bold black text including titles and artist names.

Plastikcomb Issue 8 delivers a riotous loveletter to the iconoclastic graphic styles of the 1990s, stepping deliberately away from contemporary grids to let collage, texture, and tactile layout reign. Editors Aaron L. Beebe and Thomas Schostok — no strangers to analogue rebellion — have crafted each spread to echo the feverish energy of Ray Gun, punk graphics, and 4AD’s Vaughan Oliver, as noted by Rick Poynor in Eye. Bill Douglas’s cover signals the issue’s hands-on aesthetic, while interior interviews — such as Paul B. Drohan’s chaotic layout with Raphaël Vicenzi’s “grungy punk aesthetic” and Chris Bigg’s restrained yet refined design for Chris Ferebee — demonstrate the magazine’s range from dense, turn-the-page demands to spacious, colourful elegance. Jeffery “Mr.” Keedy’s reflective feature, “The Collage Machine,” positions collage as an enduring, if fleeting, form of resistance in an increasingly algorithmic world — offering a “yearning for a different or better reality” through its defiantly ramshackle charm.

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