O.K. Periodicals is an interesting experimental periodical. That quite covers it, doesn’t it? O.K. Periodicals are published twice a year. Not a bad running frequency, considering what makes this quirky magazine stand out. The way it uses the entire medium to experiment with; the cover, the pages themselves, the ink used, the content. I have said it before in a review summary of O.K. Periodicals #2. I wouldn’t be surprised if O.K. even changed shape over the course of it’s magazinial life.
Falling on the doormat carrying a nice 112 pages, it’s money well spent. The entire issue is about repetition. It doesn’t just show patterns or copies, it widens the perspective. There’s interviews and articles about lookalikes, serial killers, collecting, Tourette’s and yes; patterns and copies. Even the cover itself has been crowdsourced. The original was broken down into tiny sections and then recreated by contributors. Resulting in a recreated (thus repeated) cover.
O.K. has short articles. It’s not Nature or National Geographic. Instead it’s a quite a visually stimulating magazine with short articles to kill time. Short, though they might push you to come up with new ideas. At 112 pages it’s good value for money. One small downside of the magazine are the occasional spelling mistakes.
Basically what O.K. Periodicals proves once again with this issue, is it’s great capability of taking a single subject and broadening it as much as possible. Like a small brainstorm in a book. They cover basic subjects (Collections, Failure, Repeat) and thus create a platform. It’s not about cats, Bugatti’s or filter cigarettes; it’s much more about abstracts. Verbs rather than things. See how wide a subject can stretch one magazine at a time.
A magazine covering such planar subjects is much more compelling to anyone in the creative industry who has to come up with solid concepts. It can push you to create a foundation to construct your ideas on. Better than, for instance, a book with portraits.
Periodicals #3: Repeat can be ordered from the O.K. Periodicals website. Also still avaiable for order are #1 and #2.
