THEM THANGS IN PRINT Zine of the ‘Week’ #3

Them Thangs is one of our favorite sites and we eagerly await their posts. Each page is a highly curated thematic collection of found images. Sometimes risque, always cool, the pages are filled with pictures juxtaposed like a good set of impressionistic lyrics. So, when we heard that Justin Blyth, the dude behind the site, was putting together a print magazine well, of course it just had to be ‘zine of the week’




Get the magazine here: www.them-thangs.com/the-new-dark-age

-How long have you been publishing and how did you start?
I started the blog about 1.5 years ago, essentially out of boredom. I was working at an advertising agency and found myself with a lot of down time so I started collecting all my favorite design/ photography and fashion related images from the web. This is the first edition of the printed magazine so I really just started publishing a month ago. I liked the idea of having a more permanent document that you can hold in your hands, and that only a certain amount of people will be able to fully experience, unlike a blog page. I also had a chance to think more about the relationships of the contributions from various artists and how they would all fit together in a way that felt similar to the blog experience.

-How do you fund it and how do you distribute it?
The content of the first issue is from myself and 13 contributing artists, mostly friends… but the funding, design, printing and distribution is all out of pocket. I took pre-orders and have been talking with some book stores and distribution houses, but as of now I’m selling them through the blog.

-Is it a labour of love?
Total labour of love.. it has really been a full-time job for about a month. It makes you realize that you could have different people in charge of printing, distribution, press, orders, shipping etc, and you would STILL be super busy. Doing it all yourself can be rough. On the flip-side, it’s a dream job. I’m curating and designing something to fit my vision and there is nobody second-guessing my choices or suggesting changes. In the “real world” I may have had a few days to design something like this, but I was able to really take my time and think about things, waiting until I truly thought it was ready.

-What else are you working on?
Im living in Amsterdam right now and I work with agencies on campaigns for Coke, Nike etc, so that’s what pays the bills. Aside from that I have been in a couple group shows recently, I’m doing some work for Stussy, and I do design work for boutique design houses in LA and NY from time to time.

-What are some other art books/magazines you love?
Some current favorites…

Pie #02 with Beni Bischof

Adios #3 is a collection of young finnish artists:

Thomas Traum // Most Beautiful Swiss Books “The Future Issue” 2009:


Field Trip Magazine #1:

The Reading of Time in the Text of Nature, Klaus Merkel:

Quompendium Volume 1:


Smoke bath#1:

Them Rag #02:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 05:21. It is filed under Zine Of The Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Comments are closed.