In the mid-aughts I worked at the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto as their Communications Coordinator. One of my duties was designing the organization’s new bi-monthly magazine, Filmprint. I designed 10 issues in all, from building up the first issue in 2005, through a redesign in 2006, up until the last issue in 2007 when the magazine was sadly ended.
Editor Bunmi Adeoye came onboard with the March/April issue in 2006 and together we really began to explore what might be possible with the magazine—each issue was stronger than the last. I also turned to typographer Richard Hunt to help me sort out my terrible typesetting which greatly improved later issues! Bye bye Bodoni, hello Plantin.
At the height of our powers the March/April 2007 “Movie Inside” issue included a strip of film and an invitation to participate in making the world’s first direct mail movie. Readers were invited to take the filmstrip and “scratch, boil, bleach, paint, cut, hole-punch, nibble, pulverize, mark, hammer, douse, glue, carve, hug, kiss, nail polish, blotted, wipe, paste, smear, stare at, tap dance on, layer, splice it”—then mail the result back to lift where all the submitted strips would be spliced together to be screen later in the year.
LIFT has scanned all of the issues of Filmprint from 2005–2007 and they are viewable as PDFs on LIFT’s website.
