Interview by Max Erdenberger
as featured on the LA-based ViewersLikeU blog
Visit /viewerslikeu.squarespace.com/

Your Surname where does that come from?
— Bojkowski is a Polish surname, although I was born in Australia. It took me until I was in my second grade in primary school before I could work out how to spell it (it helps if you break it down into three easy-to-swallow chunks). I still have trouble pronouncing it. It the moment I'm opting for 'boi-yov-ski'.

Where are you originally from and how did you end up in London?
— I grew up in Melbourne, Australia. It's a really comfy place to live (although this 'global warming' thing seems to be turning the place into a dustbowl) but not so exciting for graphic designers... maybe it's changed in the last 8 years. There are still some ace designers down there like Tin & Ed, Chase & Galley, Round and The Co-op but I never got the feeling that business took design as seriously in Australia as they do in places like London.
— Most Australians make the pilgrimage back to 'the motherland' at some point. I came for a short holiday 9 years ago and then returned the following year and haven't lived anywhere since. London kind of sucks, but you're never bored... that's the official line.

Can you explain your involvement with YCN?
— YCN is hard to explain. The operation is run by Nick Defty. It started life as an online community for young creatives, and then they launched a student awards scheme, which then led to publishing an annual compendium of design and illustration by recent grads and things have spiralled out from there.
— YCN's annual book used to be produced by a publishing house called John Brown (whose creative director is Jeremy Leslie of MagCulture fame). YCN decided to take the design and production in house. I was freelancing for John Brown when I heard about the job and made some enquiries about it, just to see how big a job it would be to do and before I knew it I was working on the 0607 edition of the YCN Book. Since then I've worked on the 0708 edition with Alex Bec and their first magazine, Ideas Illustrated with Josefine Engstrom, as well as a number of other smaller projects including signage for their first show at the Royal College of Art last year.
— YCNs got a really solid ethos behind it where they actively seek ways to use design and image making to make ace things happen. It's the sort of entity that gives you the warm fuzzies to be a part of.

Your blog (Boicozine) is highly curated, where does this urge to share and organise information come from? Do you ever get accused of being the design police?
— I have got people's backs up before. I won't name names but I've received emails from designers asking what I've done to offend them before. We usually end up as friends. It's mainly when I've been a bit too cutting with my critiques.
— Aside from the fact that it's kind of cool to stir the pot every now and then, I do feel that there's a lack of critical response to design, which makes no sense at all when you consider the amount of people on blogs, writing and posting about design these days. I'd hate Boicozine to be a place where I'm just posting endless pics of stuff that looks cool without discussing what makes these things tick. The core idea behind Boicozine is that it's about looking under the bonnet and trying to find something new to talk about. But it's tricky, huh.

How do you manage to keep your own practice, your blog, Print Publish, and a steady stream of freelance assignments going and not piss people (clients, friends, employers, readers, etc) off?
— It's really tricky. I'm a bit of a design tourist too. I like to be able to visit different sorts of studios and environments to see how they work. I recently left a job because it left me with no time or energy to write or think outside of work. I do a lot of freelance work but I would really like to be taking on more independent commissions... or working on my own projects. I hope I'm not pissing people off. If I am, they're much too polite to say. I hope my clients find it exciting to have a hardcore design geek like me in the studio.

Our blogs always seem to have a lot of crossover not in specific post but perhaps in intent. Do you every get tired of promoting other people's work?
— Not really. Do you? I'm not overly fond of the cult of personality that certain groups of blogs seem to unwittingly cultivate. But I think, we're 'champions of design' more than anything...

What has your blog taught you that you didn't know before you started it?
— Loads of CSS (and other techy stuff) and that monitoring stats can be super addictive.

There have always been a love affair between American designers and British designers. Do you think this has increased due to the proliferation of blogs? Has either side been watered down and exposed to the realities that mundanity/poor design is abundant in both cultures?
— It sounds kind of poncy, but I like to refer to myself as an 'International citizen'. Boicozine is only London orientated because I live here. I've tried to inject as much 'internationalism' into it as possible, especially when travelling about. Last couple of 'holidays' I've taken the laptop along, which always feels kind of wrong but then you're seeing M/M Paris Love Burgers in Paris or whatever... it's a shame not to share these things really. The differences between cultures are always more interesting than what makes them the same, don't you reckon? A lot of the design blogs out there (present company excluded, of course) could do with focussing on difference a bit more. Do you still use Google Reader? I find it kind of sad when you see the same things popping up again and again.
— 28th May 2008

'A Real Revolution'
as featured in the Colophon2007 Book 'We Love Magazines'
Visit /gestalten.com/

— When I think pre-digital, I always think i-D magazine's Trash Issue (i-dmagazine.com). I remember picking it up in the shop (the Box Hill Station newsagent, to be precise) and showing a friend... this was pushing the possibilities of print effects to delirious ends. I wanted to do stuff like this.
— By my final year of High School, 'Ready, Set, Go!' was already established as one of the first pieces of 'desktop publishing' software (a term that still fills my head with lurid clip art and nasty type effect a la Corel Draw). I had a crack at Ready, Set, Go! (as used by Emigre magazine at the time) but kept coming back to i-D's cut-and-paste aesthetic where all you needed was a photocopier, a typeface catalogue, scissors and a gluestick.
— At university, we had a year of design basics before being introduced to the Apple Mac. I remember lecturers peering through the computer lab window looking a little worried. The majority had a very limited knowledge of computers, but many of us felt compelled to test their limits. I looked around for magazines that were exploiting this new form of digital design and production, such as Lime Lizard, an indie music mag that managed to tred a fine line between appearing slick and erratic.
— Roughly about the same time, David Carson's redesign of Surfer magazine came along and bent magazine design all out of shape. KGB, Ray Gun and Speak soon followed. Designers were getting their heads round 'the end of print' and working out if these new machines, that were making work a heck of a lot easier, would also do them out of a job.
— The realisation soon emerged that as 'personal computers' took over day-to-day tasks, we needed print media all the more to make sense of things. A new type of self-publisher was also born: anyone with the right combination of hard and software that could manage this new pool of independent creatives (see Dazed & Confused, Tokion and Sleazenation). Meanwhile I was working for a small agency in South Melbourne where I was co-ersed into tackling this internet/website' thing that was happening...
— The revolution has calmed down considerably since my first Mac encounter, but we still have yet to see the first blog-like magazine: creating a new aesthetic emulating the way we read online. Could be the next seismic shift in magazine design and publishing... mayhaps.