Item magazine’s sixth issue explores what it means to behave badly

Item Magazine is a student-run publication that began as a BA project by Sally Paschmann back in 2019. Taking on a long and varied life after its conception, the publishing pursuit has seen six issues to date, becoming “a small institution in its own right”. Now, it’s a core part of the curriculum in the department of Culture and Design at HTW in Berlin, engaging designers with a different challenge each year. Taught and led by Sally for issues one to four and more recently an editorial module managed by Berlin-based art directors and designers Aletta Wetterstrand and Fred Heinsohn, founders of studio Hei Agenda, last year, the magazine brought together 18 students to design its sixth edition.

“Elements like the logo, format and some fonts are predefined, while everything else is open for exploration,” explains Fred Heinsohn. The project introduces students to past editions of Item Magazine for inspiration and context, and from then on the designers dive into specialised roles. “Some focus on editorial design, imagining the visual language of the magazine through layouts and typography. Others delve into writing, conducting interviews and editing content,” says Fred. “Meanwhile, another group crafts strategies to promote the magazine on social media and manages crowdfunding campaigns to finance production,” says Fred.

A tried-and-tested tradition from previous years, this collaborative, student-led dynamic produced Item’s latest issue: Artig. Which translates to ‘well behaved’ in German, “it also serves as a suffix meaning ‘-like’, for example ‘wolkenartig’ is cloud-like, and ‘baumartig’ means tree-like”, shares Aletta Wetterstrand. “The word’s duality made it playful and adaptable – something that perfectly captured the spirit of exploration and flexibility that defines the issue.”

A guiding question for this edition of the magazine was: What does it mean to be well-behaved, and how does it shape our way of living? This seeped into the magazine’s loose grid system where rules were broken to “let each article’s personality sine through”, says Thomas Christl, one of the designers. “This issue is a mix of chaos and cohesion: structured enough to feel deliberate but wild enough to stay exciting, all while keeping Item’s identity intact,” he says.

The publication’s editorial output is multilingual and diverse in its subject, showcasing a range of different projects and visual styles from over 50 students. Each contributor has taken on the issue’s themes in different forms. Zain Salam Assaad addresses the topic of being ‘a good immigrant’, delving into the experiences of those who have fled their home countries; artist Jack Carden discusses media censorship and the impact of social media on artists worldwide; and Florence Monique Jacobi’s translated a short film into print that shares the challenges and joys of a solo road trip in her Volvo.

Since the magazine team changes annually, it has been crucial for the cohort to “find the project’s core and find connections between each new edition and the others”, shares Leen Shaballout, one of the editors of this year’s issue. “Throughout all the previous issues – xeno, inter, trans, strip, kursiv, and finally the suffix -artig – students have tackled thought-provoking topics, raw and unfiltered.” She concludes: “We’ve explored subjects around identity in all its forms, transformation, the foreign, and how art, design, identity, and norms can truly satisfy both the public and our inner selves.”