Consumer Reports

Unbiased reviews of periodicals, art books, zines, and works of profound visual significance.

A green zine is seen in a repeating grid pattern on a black background, the zine title says NEW YORK CITY 1969 Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Wholesale Market Prices 1969

New York City Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Wholesale Market Prices 1969 by the Department of Information

August 5th, 2024  |  

The Department of Information Office of Public Awareness, Division of Film, Radio, Television, and Books is proud to release the first publication in a series of unsanctioned but greatly improved reproductions of original USDA Fruit and Vegetable Market News Reports from the National Agricultural Library. These semi-faithful reproductions have been lovingly brought back to life […]

Sentient Sidewalk: Lessons From New York City’s Wild Medicinal Plants by Nikki Scioscia

March 29th, 2024  |  

On a recent Department field trip to a local bookstore (for our bi-monthly cultural enrichment outing and team-building activity), our visiting botanist-in-residence and eclectic zine expert, Bjorn, picked up an interesting book by Brooklyn-based artist, designer, and author, Nikki Scioscia. Sentient Sidewalk: Lessons from New York City’s Wild Medicinal Plants is a striking risograph-printed and […]

Colorado Legal Psychedelics: Observations on Personal Treatment Possibilities

July 6th, 2023  |  

During a recent official Department research expedition that took place deep in the mountains of Colorado our team uncovered a peculiar artifact. The object appeared to be a self-published journal of observations from a respected and storied career medical professional. The subject of which focused on the personal treatment possibilities of legal (state-level in Colorado, […]

Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects

January 28th, 2022  |  

While some of the objects in Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects are actually very much still around, it is true that all of them more fully belong to a now distant period of time that appreciated them more. Advertised by the University of Chicago Press as a “visual tour through futures past via the […]

CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It by Ruben Pater

October 21st, 2021  |  

Ruben Pater and Amsterdam-based Valiz Publishers’ CAPS LOCK: How Capitalism Took Hold of Graphic Design, and How to Escape From It is an extensive (552 pages) but very engaging, accessible, and portable account of graphic design’s current and historical relationship with capitalism (and theories on how, as a designer, to potentially decouple the inextricably-linked duo). […]

The Islandia Journal: A (Sub)Tropical Periodical

October 9th, 2021  |  

The Miami-based Islandia Journal offers a refreshing and strange look at some of Florida’s more eccentric angles and anomalies through the hazy, sun-drenched, and mysterious lenses of local visual artists and writers. It is focused around the paranormal, weird, historical, and uniquely Floridian. The 8 ½’’ x 5 ½’’ limited-run journal’s first issue was published […]

A Bestiary of the Anthropocene: An Illustrated Atlas of Hybrid Plants, Animals, Minerals, Fungi, and Other Specimens

June 3rd, 2021  |  

Eindhoven, Netherlands’ Onomatopee Projects, with Nicolas Nova and Dislocation.org, use reflective silver ink on 255 pages of matte black paper to illustrate and explain to us what kinds of strange, wonderful, and terrifying things we might expect to encounter in the latest epoch of geological time. The A5 size publication, while quite thick, feels accessible […]

The Interminable Outdoor Publications of James E. Lawrence

May 12th, 2021  |  

James E. Lawrence would have been about 25 years old when he was assigned to survey the wild deer population outside of Brookhaven National Laboratory, a top-secret government research center full of particle physicists and experimental happenings, where said deer were running amok scaling the 12ft tall fence to eat radioactive plants. Was this the […]

Extrapolation Factory Operator’s Manual

May 11th, 2021  |  

Extrapolation Factory Operator’s Manual by Elliott P. Montgomery and Chris Woebken is a dual-language guide full of beautiful photos, thoughtful typesetting, curious illustrated diagrams, and words you have never seen before. The Factory itself is a design-based research studio in Brooklyn founded by the two authors. It is here they develop “experimental methods for collaboratively […]

Bufo Alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert by Ken Nelson, Expanded and Updated Edition by Hamilton Morris

May 11th, 2021  |  

Hamilton Morris, chemist and indie zine hobbyist, took it upon himself to update and republish the cult classic “ethnoherpetological”* pamphlet, Bufo Alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert, from 1983. A notable addition to the new version includes Mr. Morris’ untold history of how the original author, Ken Nelson, who had published under a […]

MY BODY FEELS AMAZING: A Zine by Elevator Teeth

May 10th, 2021  |  

MY BODY FEELS AMAZING is a meditation on space, the body, and form. Originally printed in 2019, this latest edition was recently re-printed via risograph with a thermographic cover and saddle stitch binding. The heat-printed method creates this raised, rubbery effect, making gliding your hands over the the cover and back page a pleasant tactile […]

Mushrooms & Friends 3 by Phyllis Ma

May 10th, 2021  |  

Mushrooms & Friends 3 is an 8.5” x 11” staple-bound high-fidelity celebration of wild mushrooms, their friends, imagination, and the color spectrum. It is not necessary to know that Cantharellus cinnabarinus–commonly known as a chanterelle–is edible, or that it’s Greek name refers to it’s cup-like shape, to appreciate that the mushroom looks really cool and […]