PUZL Zine - 1st Edition

FIRST EDITION | SEPT. 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS THE BEGINNING 3 K. BONAMI 5-6 INTERVIEW: BUDDY DUNCAN 7-10 “SHIT, THIS GOT REAL!” 11 MIND DUMP 13

Front Cover Photos: Alex Davis ©2011 PUZL™ All rights reserved.

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INTRODUCTION

by OLEG the Intern

Hello and welcome to our first edition.

First is clearly the operative word here. We’re moving into a lot of new territories in preparation for a booming 2012. Every edition will feature new content, new layouts, and of course new covers.

We are looking for contributors from all backgrounds. Whether you’re a painter or a ice cream truck driver, we’d like to hear your story and show people the world through your eyes. We’ll also be posting topics once a month on our blog to help guide the theme for each edition, so if one of them interests you please feel free to submit your idea.

It is our plan that those of you who read this will be inspired, excited, and compelled to become a part of this project.

Please submit ideas, art, layouts, articles to: ezine@solvethispuzl.com Author(s) of anything that makes the magazine will be fully credited.

This is a digital zine, and it is available to all. So, please share!

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THE BEGINNING

by Mr. PUZL

My earliest memories of puzzles occurred when my family had just settled in Southern Florida. My dad traveled a lot for business; I would see him for a couple days or a week and then he would be off for a month or two traveling to captivating places all over the world.

When he was around, we’d break open a puzzle and start putting the pieces together. Usually I would end up finishing it myself, but once I started to understand how they worked we’d be able to finish one, sometimes two in a week before he had to leave. As I got older, I began doing more of them on my own, and delved into 3D puzzles.

Big Ben and Tour Eiffel by PUZZ 3D™ were definitely my favourites. I got great satisfaction out of seeing something grow from a collection of flat pieces into these amazing structures. Inevitably, this led me to the world of LEGO®, and any time I passed a toy store I would make moves to snag a box.

LEGO®, what an amazing invention. I’m not talking about the prepackaged ready-to-assemble sets, but rather those raw, dimpled, individual pieces. Building a spaceship, or a castle, or a fire station was a lot of fun, but the real satisfying stuff was getting a box of random pieces, throwing them on the ground and building things that had never been built before. I would spend hours on the floor creating these abstract worlds made up of a mixture of the ready-toassemble sets and the basic individual pieces. I was always shifting pieces around like I was trying to find the perfect fit. I would move entire buildings from one location to another for no apparent reason other than I thought I it would look better somewhere else. I was never satisfied, however. I would spend hours building a city only to tear most of it down and start over again. It was healthy right? ...I was only 10.

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“OLEG the Intern” - 2010

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DAILY BOS - PUZL SCAVENGER HUNT - BOSTON

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9 SNAPSHOTS TAKEN EVERY DAY - MOSTLY AROUND BOSTON - WITH A CAMERA PHONE LIKE DAILY BOS ON FACEBOOK - SEE MORE WORK AT KBONAMI.COM

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INTERVIEW: BUDDY DUNCAN

by Mr. PUZL

Buddy Duncan is a designer & recovering illustrator schooled in New York and Boston. He’s currently a Design Director at a Boston-area media group. Mr. PUZL had a chance to sit down with this 40-something over drinks and found out a little about the man, his beer preferences, and a bit of his personal design history.

Mr. PUZL: We heard you’re a wanted man in some states, can you confirm this?

BUDDY DUNCAN: Nope. Cops like me. I understand them and what their job is, so in the past when they’re called into my orbit, I immediately assist them in ‘solving the problem’ and they get to leave the bar and go back to doing whatever they do when they’re not trying to bust people for streaking. Which I prefer to call a “victimless crime” if a crime at all.

MP: Who’s your favorite artist?

BD: That would be Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992). Who had the reputation as a notably bleak chronicler of the human condition.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to travel to the Tate Gallery in London, or a traveling show to really, really, ‘see’ his work. Viewing his work online doesn’t even begin to explain him. Bacon was the subject of two major Tate retrospectives during his lifetime and received a third in 2008. Bacon always professed not to depend on preparatory works and was resolute that he never drew. When at the Tate, I found that the room featuring his paintings was chilly and made you think somebody had left a window open nearby — but there weren’t any. Insert spooky music here.

MP: Are you working on any new projects?

BD: Having lectured on topics such as ‘Career Path’ and ‘Irreverent Design’ in 2009/10 I’ve been invited back to a a local design university in October and have been kicking around topics in my head, which is invigorating and gut-wrenching at the same time. My first task is to come up with a topic that won’t bore the hell out of fifty students packed into a room with poor ventilation. The second task is making sure the topic doesn’t get me thrown out of the building. At minimum I want to be a person that gives them a heads-up on what to expect after graduation and the major differences between academic design vs. corporate design.

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MP: Things that annoy you...

BD: Facebook annoys me. Like most of us, I’m on it daily and often post snarky ‘shopped photos on it, but I have a Love / Hate / Love / Hate relationship with it.

Why? Because I feel that in a forum which links millions of people together, there should be more bad-ass exciting stuff going on. I feel like it’s still in its infancy and I’m impatient with how long its been crawling. I’m hoping that somebody might come along and mod Facebook’s blood & guts in such a way that the result induces a wacky sort of ‘social vomiting’ on a global scale that turns the vanilla Facebook on its head and launches us into a new way of communicating globally. I know it’s coming... that’s what humans do; they fuck shit up when they get bored or need to ‘express themselves’ for the sake of creative or fiscal rewards. For example, the Wright Brothers built bicycles before they invented planes. Dean Kamen built customized wheel-chairs before he invented the Segway.

MP: I heard you like beer. Any preferences?

BD: Again, Love / Hate / Love / Hate can apply here as well. I enjoy Duvel and Newcastle but wouldn’t exactly grab my parched throat and scream “WHYYYY GOD?” if they ever stopped brewing them. I understand the importance of Budweiser in society, which I sometimes call ‘American Juice’ and I cringe when I recall buying beer at 17 and feeling like the fate of my evening hung in my ability to drink many of them as fast as possible. Over the past year or so, I’ve seen my relationship to beer and alcohol change; it’s an ex-girlfriend who I’m still friendly with and talk to -- only because she’s everywhere I go.

MP: Has your artwork ever gotten you in trouble?

BD: Some time ago I got into a freaky scuffle for submitting some experimental artwork to a charity art auction. The foundation organizing the event was planning to hand me an award during the banquet before the auction for being a “10-year donor.” The work itself was a 12-piece photoshop-enhanced collection depicting the Peanuts characters (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, etc) recreating photographic scenes of renowned homo-erotic photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. The Auction Committee gladly accepted the work and anticipated making some good bank with it during the auction, but then pretended to be ‘horrified and offended’ when somebody complained about the nudity in the work as they were setting it up in the ballroom the day before. The local media picked up on it and it went viral the next day. I had purchase requests emailed from US, UK, and Germany. Some called it brilliant satire, but the lawyers for the Charles Schulz estate didn’t agree and came after me. I was getting numerous lawyer phone calls and freaking out, but I had tickets to Lollapalooza, so the week wasn’t a total loss. *BD was gracious to let us publish some of his work on the following pages

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“SHIT, THIS GOT REAL!”

by Noir Rob

PUZL to me is escapism in real life. I see those four letters and think of the four million things it can achieve on its own and with others.

We’ve worked with hip-hop groups, rock bands, street vendors, movie producers and one of the biggest names in fashion. All in one year. We don’t restrict ourselves with the sky as the limit. We’re shooting for the fucking moon. I like to think that we don’t think outside the box, we live there. Constantly learning is key but ya gotta adapt.

We’re like the point guard faced up against the hulking center. Yea you may block our shit, but you gotta catch us first. We dive through traffic fearlessly and emerge on the other side no worse for wear.

I joined PUZL after a night of good old fashioned boozin’ with friends. One of them threw a sticker up and I asked him what it was.

Next thing I know, I’m rolling through the Karmaloop offices pitching to the owner and even faster than that we’re up on the site. Now I’m like, “Shit, this got real!”

So now it’s a year later and we’re a year wiser and ready to take off.

This book is an extension of what we have planned and...

K N I H T T ’ , N X O O D B E E W H .

T “.. .”

E E D I R S E T H U T O VE I L WE

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“MUTE” - SPRING 2010

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MIND UNWIND

by OLEG the Intern

A large problem with today’s workplace is the lack of respect and credit in-house designers get (being a freelancer is a whole different beast that I will address separately some day).

To most people in 9-5 jobs it’s a “punch-in, punch-out” world where you get in, check off a list of things to do and then go home. For designers, it’s a race with the clock to see how many designs you can bump out within an 8 hour day. Most people just don’t get it, and they never will. Designers are not machines, and creating a design doesn’t just happen within an hour or 30 minutes. While some of the best designs may take only moments of inspiration, others require days if not weeks of careful consideration, revision and refinement.

There is no set of instructions or a pattern to true design work. So at the mercy of the clock and the client/manager you sacrifice great design for a mediocre result to satisfy the status quo.

At the end of the working day most designers will say they’ve made one truly good piece of work out of about 50 shitty ones... if they’re lucky maybe two.

PUZL started as a means to satisfy a hunger for creating designs that didn’t suck. It became a place where you couldn’t be micromanaged like some poor schmuck in a customer service department, or a sales team. PUZL exists for the mindful who are escaping the mindless.

As Karl Denson (Greyboy Allstars) calmly says in the intro to Unwind your Mind; “Alright. Alright now. Sit back down. Relax. Let your mind unwind. Let the cobwebs and fog slip on out of your ears, and slide on down your shoulders...”

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TWITTER

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THANK YOU: Buddy Duncan, Rob Noir, K. Bonami, Two Heads Photography, Alex Davis, Sarah Whitmore, The Karmaloop Family, Jeff at OneOffApparel, Uncle Benny, Jon Jon, The Charlie River Band, Ally, Pentatonic Productions, Eung-Jin, Ben, Kitt, RADIx, Quite Nyce, SEEK, New England weather... so many more that we will keep adding to this list.