Is it just us, or is there a bit of a flurry of zines and newspapers going on at the moment? Feels like there’s a real wealth of new stuff out there.

We picked up the first issue of Eight:48 from Magma last week. It’s from the folks at Counterprint (the online seller of out-of-print and hard-to-find art & design books), and is split between editorials about the issue’s theme ‘Print is Dead?’, and a series of profiles of designers and illustrators.

Steven Heller writes briefly about why books matter; James Pallister (from Meat Magazine) writes a well-informed piece about the future of magazines (and how design blogs can help create sales…); while Dan Rolfe Johnson (from Grafik) discusses how magazines will need to work from the blog up. The profiles include HelloVon, Julien Vallee and Anthony Burrill.

Obviously there’s a danger of a newspaper/magazine about newspapers/magazines disappearing up its own well designed arse, but the essays are well considered, so it pretty much gets away with it. Be very interesting to see where it goes next…

Treading some similar ground, but with a slightly more informal tone, the latest issue of the very lovely Gym Class Magazine (For The Guy Chosen Last) features a mix of illustration, design and photography, as well as an interview with MagCulture’s Jeremy Leslie. (They also do a tasty Chosen Last t-shirt, which Alistair has been sporting round the studio.)

Print is dead? Not by a long shot.