‘Tis Valentines, lovers and loafers. The perfect time for geeky design porn and faux fantasy fonts.  Sate your passion. Have your way. Lust. A Traveling Art Journal of Graphic Designers.

Lucky Bad Boy Jim did. Then again, when does Jim not? Rockport Publishers gave Mr. Naughty carte blanche on their UPS Next Day account to send around the globe a sketchbook in which his pals could share their design fantasies.  A chain love letter. Don’t get too excited: these are people who blush at all cap full frontal fonts and yearn at night for wider kerning. But, so they did, one by one, each adding their personal dreams to this heaving, panting growing sketchbook of designer fantasy.

The panting starts with Victore before he sends her packing to Mike Perry and  Morgan Sheasby also of Brooklyn; on R Train under the East River (Chris Thompson, Chip Kidd, Kyle MacDonald, KARLSSONWILKER, Paul Sahre, Matthias Emstberg, Jakob Trollback and Seymour Chwast); next, it clams up to Boston (Chas Maviyane-Davis); shortly by lobster boat to Belfast, Maine’s Main Brain (John Bielenberg) who pounds it into steak and cheese for Lanny Sommese of Philadelphia; on a slowly ticking boat goes she to Olde Londontown (Matthew McGuinness, Neville Brody); after which she  knocks about with Glourock, Scotland’s one-L’d Wil (Freeborn) who nearly kilts the gal by mixing in his salt and cod and stamping  it “One-Way To Finland!”  and Kari Piippo; she butters her up and sends it by baguette to Paris (Fanny LeBras, Catherine Zask, Pierre Bernard); ensuite, she rolls meatball-like Rimini-way (Leonardo Sonnoli); this leads to a 3rd class ticket in a Zügwagen clanking nach Berlin (Niemann, mann, are you not nach Neu Amsterdam auch?) beaten but undefeated on  she staggers into a dank canal of broken love in Old Amsterdam (Max Kisman) where neutral parties next hide her under a Zurich’s cloak  (Claudia Schmauder) then toss her in a Blue Danube coal barge to Prague (Karel Misek); engendered she belts a borscht song  in a Warsaw fog where Piotr Mlodozeniec send her south by celery soup to Slovenia (Radovan Jenko) and then of clear cold vodka onward to Moscow (Vladimir Chaika); Oh fool!, All Roads to Istambul Lead and Sadik Karamustafa’s tender embrace and on and on  verklempt and coughing arrives in Tel Aviv (Yossi Lemel) just before an exit east to China, Something (Wang Xu) and then again by steamer dumpling to Seoul Ahn Sang-Soo; Gesundheit and refreshed she sake-toes towards ancient Osaka (Keizo Matsui) before dipping down deep to Sweet Southern Adelaide and Chris Bowden’s nimble touch; yet spent and speechless she washes ashore on South African Durban beaches (Garth Walker); not stopping over an ocean away in Argentina she flees where El Fantasmas soon has its way before northern neighbors in Sao Paulo picked up the conversation (Rico Lens); oh, limp and spammed across the Rio Grande thus landing on the Austin doorstep of one good Christian Helms who dries her, feeds her, sups her and sends her overwHelmed  to Artsy Damp and Chilly Chantry who, after a little Seattle space needling, doth pack her off,  baroque and bursting, to a white adoring R. Valicenti, who, sealing her ticket with a kiss, returns her C.O.D. to a pining, happy James Victore. What a trip.

One by one, each participant added to this Dreambook of the Master Race. How’d they do? Some took the challenge seriously. Others appear to have been going through the motions. A few left it to their four year olds.

Still, what accounts for taste?  One man’s fantasy is another man’s nightmare. But perhaps the best were saved for last. If Art Chantry’s LUSTY dream comes true this iconoclastic recluse will have the highest profile address in Seattle, with tourists lining outside his doors—harshing his karma and upsetting his Leave Me Alone Zen. Valicenti, sensing the need for redemption, really does seal it with a kiss.

Need a little lift? Take this book and add your own chapter—then send it to a friend with fresh instructions. Who knows how this love story ends. Does it really have to?