Colors Notebook - Faces

<P>"A magazine about the rest of the world" - so reads the celebrated subtitle of the magazine Colors. With their latest project, the creative minds at Fabrica breathe new life into that motto. In cooperation with Reporters sans Frontières, they used various means to distribute blank notebooks to international graphic designers, illustrators, artists, photographers, and fi lmmakers - and also, of course, to students in every creative profession. But it isn't just creative professionals they have in their sights with the Notebook Project but - much more broadly - people of all ages and social classes and from a wide range of ethnic, religious, and political communities all over the world. With 3,500 richly illustrated notebooks full of drawings and collages already submitted, the time is right to engage in a provisional stocktaking. This is done here with a little series of books that selects the best from the works submitted, organizes it thematically, and annotates it professionally. The result is an attractive invitation to graphic designers and illustrators: for "there is hardly a designer today who isn't full of enthusiasm for vernacular culture, graffi ti, amateurish drawings, and charmingly misused typography" (G. Terstiege, editor in chief of form).</P> <P>The volume Faces brings together a fascinating variety of faces - self- portraits as well as portraits of others. Open and coded messages from and about human beings of today, their feelings, their thoughts, and above all how they see and understand themselves - or how they would like to be seen by others. "What this books shows is that when faced with the prospect of total artistic freedom the artist pulls the most intimate images from wherever they are lodged and exposes them for all to see" (Steven Heller).</P>