Ob.scene, no. 7 – (+.+) & <*

Ob.scene 7: Ob.scene/Other.scenes

journal
2017
offset lithograph, adhesive bound
138 x 204 mm, 224 pp

Ob.scene is a performing arts journal focused on the “things out of the stage.” The seventh issue commemorates three interrelated anniversaries: the 150th anniversary of Marx’s Das Kapital, the 100th of Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution, and the 50th of Debord’s La société du spectacle. The pages present a montage of quotations from various texts, films, videos, and songs, all somehow related to the three historic moments.

The exterior follows the identity of the journal, the blank front cover. The interior typography attempts at a situationist practice of détournement, or its re-appropriation. The typeface, unusually sentimental and comically kitschy for the serious content (history!, struggle!, revolution!), is something widely used by amateurs (the “ones who love”) for various purposes from fried chicken advertising to, indeed, revolutionary political flyers. A Korean equivalence of Comic Sans, it’s probably the most hated typeface among the designers. But what do they know about the people?