StudioPublishingShopNewsAbout
ConnectPress
Stack of alternating magazine covers, all with the title "Afterall". The covers are red, yellow, green, purple, blue.

Client

Central Saint Martins

Year

2020

Location

London, UK

Services

Creative DirectionIdentity UpdatePublication Design

Central Saint Martins
Afterall Journal

Published twice a year, each issue of Afterall journal includes in-depth considerations of the work of contemporary artists, as well as essays on art history and critical theory. Afterall was launched in 1999 and is published by Central Saint Martins and partners. For the fiftieth anniversary issue, Pacific was tapped to create a new identity for the storied journal, as well as executing a comprehensive redesign.

Issue 50

The fiftieth edition of the storied journal, 50 Minus 1, was produced amid the many turbulences—immunological, social and political—that marked 2020. Faced with these crises, while also working under the sign of a jubilee publication, the journal's editorial group found itself certain of at least one thing: publishing as usual was no option. Pacific spent much of the last year working with Afterall to reimagine how the journal could respond to the times, and continue to stay relevant for the next 50 issues.

Softcover, 8 × 10 inches, 194 pages

Yellow magazine cover with title, "Afterall" in black letters. The text "Issue 50" is embossed on the left side.
Magazine interior with an image on the left page and text on the right page.
Magazine interior with a section title on the left page and a black and white image on the right page.
Magazine with text on the left and right pages.
Open magazine with purple-blue centerfold image. A white band runs horizontally through the middle of the two pages.
Open magazine with a text on the left page and an image on the right page. The woman in the image is wearing black clothing and bent at the waist and holds her ear up to a white futuristic lamp.
Open magazine with a text on the left page and right pages. The left page also features a half page image on the bottom.
Open magazine with two images on the top and bottom of the left and right pages. The images are of a large-scale sculpture of a woman in a Sphinx position. The sculpture is white and fills the room in which it's placed.
Open magazine with black and white centerfold image. A white band runs horizontally along the bottom of the two pages.
Magazine interior with a section title on the left page and a yellow-orange image on the right page.
Open magazine with a black and white centerfold of a room filled with balloons, sand bags and a wooden police barricade.
Back cover of a yellow magazine. Black text is aligned in the center of the cover. A barcode is in the right bottom corner.

Issue 51

Part of an ongoing collaboration with Pacific, Afterall Journal is a curated collection of artists, contexts, events, works and exhibitions that invite you to explore the changes of medium, media, and mediation throughout history and culture.

Issue 51, ‘Mediations’. Today, rethinking the medium in art is about approaching it as a form of mediation through its technical and material dimensions and about recognising and examining the latter in their capacities to shape experience, perception as well as setting the conditions of possibilities for the production, circulation and archiving of visual culture. What is more, with technological change and the expansion of contemporary art practices on a planetary scale, global art occupies a front seat when it comes to questioning the way regimes of the sensible are shaped under technical and material conditions, in their local and cultural specificities. Today, one needs to look at locally specific and differentiated understandings of the technicality of regimes of mediations. Afterall’s long-standing interest in examining and diagnosing ‘minor’ artistic positions – be it from a geographical or historical frame – is furthered by paying attention to a plurality of artistic languages, not only to their regional or cultural conditions, but to their technical-material conditions as well.

Softcover, 8 × 10 inches, 182 pages

Green magazine cover with title, "Afterall" in black letters. The text "Issue 51" is printed in black on the left side.
Magazine interior with a section title on the left page and an orange-brown painting of a king on the right page.
Open magazine with a photograph of the earth from space. There is a tiger and man photoshopped into the image. A white border runs around the image.
Magazine interior with a section title on the left page and a collage artwork on the right page.
Magazine interior with a section title on the top left page and author names on the bottom left page. A photograph of a family occupies the right page and bleeds slightly into the left page.
Back cover of a green magazine. Black text is aligned in the center of the cover. A barcode is in the right bottom corner.

Issue 52

Part of an ongoing collaboration with Pacific, Afterall Journal is a curated collection of artists, contexts, events, works and exhibitions that invite you to explore the changes of medium, media, and mediation throughout history and culture.

Issue 52, ‘New Politics’. We seem to experience yet another version of the discontents of civilisation, paralleled by the search for new political responses. The emergence in recent times of new forms of political claims and demands and the structural inequalities, both at local and global level – exacerbated by the biopolitical governmentality of the past two years and by digitisation – has reshaped the maps of the sayable and unsayable and forms of political expression and organisation. The traditional political apparatus and its vertical organisation are increasingly paralleled if not challenged by a proliferation of voices and their calls for recognition.

Softcover, 174 pages, 8 × 10 inches

Light purple magazine cover with title, "Afterall" in black letters. The text "Issue 52" is printed in black on the left side.
Magazine interior. Two color images are on the top and bottom of the left page, image credits are in the bottom right corner. There is a color image centered on the right page with an image credit in the bottom left corner.
Magazine interior with text on the left and right pages. The text is aligned to the outside edges of the pages.
Magazine interior. The left page features a sepia-toned poster with a suited man standing in the hallway. The letters AIZ are above him on the right side of the page. The right page is a poster that features a black and white photograph of a crowd. A red banner waves across the center. The letters AIZ spread across the top of the page.
Magazine interior with a black and white etching taking up the bottom half of both pages. The top left page features the section header and the top right page features the author's name.
Magazine interior. The left page features a poster. The right page features a notebook scan, the image credits are in the bottom, left corner.
Open magazine. The essay title is centered on the left page. Essay text sits in the top right corner of the right page.
Magazine interior. The left page features a black and white photo of two men sitting at a desk. The right page has a black and white photo in the top left corner and the image credit in the bottom left corner.
Magazine interior. Six square images fill the top half of both the left and right pages. The image credit is in the bottom right corner of the left page.

Issue 53

Part of an ongoing collaboration with Pacific, Afterall Journal is a curated collection of artists, contexts, events, works and exhibitions that invite you to explore the changes of medium, media, and mediation throughout history and culture.

Issue 53 ‘Medium/Metaphor/Milieu’ looks at the exhibitionary in and beyond exhibitions. Gathered through the notions of medium and milieu, it looks at a range of practices and modes of thinking that foreground the exhibitionary in concrete, spatial, architectural and experiential terms. In parallel, the artists and authors included also explore the risks and potential of metaphors as a site of exhibition-making.

Softcover, 8 × 10 inches, 174 pages

Light blue magazine cover with title, "Afterall" in black letters. The text "Issue 52" is printed in black on the left side.
Magazine interior with a color centerfold image. A white border lines the bottom of the left and right pages. The image credit is positioned in the bottom left corner of the right page, near the binding.
Magazine interior with text on the left and right pages. The text is aligned to the outside edges of the pages.
Magazine interior with text on the top left corner of the left page. An image sits in the top third of the right page.
Magazine interior. The left page features a blue-hued aerial photograph of a city. An image credit is in the bottom right corner of the left page. A black and white photograph of an octagonal room takes up the top third of the right page.
Magazine interior with a color centerfold image. A white border runs around the whole image. The top left page features the section header and the top right page features the author's name.
Magazine interior. The left page features a colored image with its credit in the bottom right corner near the fold. The right page has a full spread image.
Magazine interior. The title of the section sits at the top with the author's name just below in the middle center of the page. The top half of the right page features a mostly yellow and green painting of an outdoor scene. There are people on the foreground walking around and lying on the ground.

Issue 54

Part of an ongoing collaboration with Pacific, Afterall Journal is a curated collection of artists, contexts, events, works and exhibitions that invite you to explore the changes of medium, media, and mediation throughout history and culture.

Issue 54 ‘Voicings’ explores modes of being, perception and expression that have been historically and often violently disabled by society. Focusing on art practices that centre the perspective of D/deaf and non-verbal communicators, it proposes reconfigurations of voice, language and sound. It asks readers to tune into a chorus of voicings, not necessarily audible, but perceivable as ‘atmospheres’, ‘vibrations’, ‘rhythms’.

Softcover, 8 × 10 inches, 174 pages

Red magazine cover with title, "Afterall" in black letters. The text "Issue 52" is printed in black on the left side.
Magazine interior featuring text and images. The left page has the section header at the top and the artist's name in the center. The right page has a center-adjusted color image of two projection screens.
Magazine interior. A color photograph fills the center-third of the left page. Two images sit on the top and bottom of the right page.
Magazine interior with text on the left page and a photograph of a sweater on the top of the right page.
Magazine interior with an image of both the left and right pages. The top third of the left page features a mostly black image with four red and blue screens floating along the center-horizontal line. The right page has a square photo of the sky aligned to the top.
Magazine interior. The left page features a green and red cape. The right page features an image of a sculpture in the top third. Image credits sit in the bottom left corner of the page.
Centerfold magazine spread. The section title and author are on the top of each page. The image spread across both pages, features a rainbow stretching between two sides of a street. Below the rainbow is a crowd of people.
Centerfold of a magazine. Color images sit on the left and right pages. Image credits are placed in the bottom left corner of the right page.
Back cover of a red magazine. Black text is aligned in the center of the cover. A barcode is in the right bottom corner.

Issue 55/56

Issue 55/56 aims to provide an ‘out of placeness’ by looking beyond Western-centricity to a transnational, pluralist horizon, exploring the new imaginaries created by artists and thinkers from the Global South, from Brazil to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Softcover, 8 × 10 inches, 348 pages

Explore More