Alex Hunting, design director of lifestyle magazine Kinfolk, has recently launched his own magazine Footnote. The new journal is ‘dedicated to fostering artistic exchange and interdisciplinary dialogue’.
Hunting, whose studio is based in Bethnal Green, London, explains that the idea for the magazine has been at the back of his mind for years, and collaboration and experiment are central to the publication. He says, ‘Footnote became a way to bring those ideas to life while celebrating the connections between different creative disciplines.’
The creative process started with a central text commissioned by Hunting and the publication’s editor George Upton, which set the tone for the whole issue. They decided on a ‘strange, vivid and hallucinatory’ story called Peg by English author and poet A.K. Blakemore. Hunting says, ‘Her writing is so rich and evocative – it has this tactile, sensory quality that really sparks ideas.’
The studio invited writers, artists, poets and photographers to respond to Blakemore’s text. The collaborators were creators that Hunting had either worked with previously, or admired from a distance, and the responses were varied and highly personal. Hunting describes the process as like putting a puzzle together, figuring out the curation and order of the unique responses into something cohesive.
Footnote is printed entirely on Fedrigoni Arena Natural paper and published by Antenne Books. Contributors include: Pemi Aguda, Sarah Blais, Jack Davison, Brian Dillon, Feargal Sharkey, and other distinguished creators.
