This week, we're talking bird-bingo, tarot cards, festive portraiture, pop-tastic zines, _and_ wonderful illustration

Saturday morning means one thing in this here parish – it’s time to upend our postbag and present to you the most lovely items that we were lucky enough to receive this week. And my goodness it’s a cracker, with tarot cards, zines and bird bingo. Do not adjust your computer screen you read that right – Bird. Bingo. Let’s do this…

James O Jenkins: United Kingdom

Photographer James O Jenkins has been blazing a trail through the various traditions of different localities around the UK, taking portraits of participants in all sorts of strange and surreal costumes. From the Egremont Crab Festival (Cumbria) to the Otterbourne Christmas Mummers, he’s been there, and has returned with all manner of interesting snaps. We’ve featured his work on the site before but this is the publication of his project –beautifully executed, he captures each individual on the spot, away from the festivities but in full get-up, so there is very nice consistency as you turn the pages.

The accompanying text, meanwhile, provides insight into the history and traditions of each local festival, from the strange (increasingly stale hot-cross buns) to the downright bizarre (get covered from head to toe in burrs, anyone?). What’s more, the images themselves are great fun – there is strong emphasis on colour and playfulness, with the subjects themselves pulling strange faces or posing solemnly in their extraordinary costumes. Brilliant.
www.jamesojenkins.co.uk

Solipsistic Pop: Book Four

Comics publisher Solipsistic Pop Books’ latest issue, Book Four has arrived in our studio and it’s absolutely great. Wrapped up in a beautiful blue and white folder, designed by John Miers, it features the book, along with several postcards that encourage the reader to travel with the comics. The content of the entire production is inspired by the visual vocabulary of maps; all manner of such information-coding, from housing sections, flow charts, urban environments, and orienteering get a look-in. Lovely.
www.solipsisticpop.com

Oat Montien: The Mystique Ephemera Tarot

London and Bangkok-based illustrator Oat Montien has sent us these tarot cards, which prettily delve into the visual past – think old photographs, circus posters, Victorian etchings – to compose indicators of the future. Each card features a distinct collage-style image, full of mystery and fuelled with a strange sort of suspense as to what they might mean. Flowers, elephants, trees, maps and magicians – all conjure up an engaging atmosphere of exodus and fascinating yet slightly sinister fairgrounds. Magical indeed.
www.oatmontien.com

Christine Berrie: Bird Bingo

It’s like bingo, but with birds instead of numbers! And not just any birds – these are proper birds, so you can learn how to identify everything from the Gouldian Finch and the Bohemian Waxwing to the Toco Toucan and the Golden Oriole. It works the same way as the popular game, but this time when you get a “full house”, it’s filled with flying creatures rather than boring old numbers. The illustrations, meanwhile, by Glasgow School of Art and Royal College of Art graduate Christine Berrie, are absolutely beautiful – extremely detailed, textural, and highly finished in a bright variety of colours that will enable you to identify them in real life, too.
www.christineberrie.com

OWT: Issue 13

Wow, this bright blast of work came sailing through our door from Manchester-based design collective OWT, and their Issue 13 definitely stirs things up. Commissioned by the Manchester School of Art, they’ve taken content from their various back issues and have re-contextualised things by juxtaposing completely different content and publishing them in random orders, which means that no two issues of the 150 six-colour Riso printed run are the same. They make for a beautiful, pop-tastic exploration of photography, text, and typography.
www.owtcreative.com/works.html