WET – the 1970s magazine that pioneered new wave design

Mark Frauenfelder 11:20 am Fri Sep 5, 2014

In 1976, WET magazine was launched in Venice, California by a young architecture school grad named Leonard Koren. During its 34-issue, five-year run, WET invented and refined a California new wave design aesthetic that spun modern graphic design in a new direction.

In his retrospective book Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, Koren writes that he had “no skills in writing, editing, designing, art direction, advertising sales, publishing, or business generally” when he launched the magazine, “but didn’t consider this an impediment.” (This sounds like Carla and I when we started bOING bOING as a zine in 1988.)

Koren he was right. WET was innovative, playful, surprising, rule-breaking, and only occasionally about gourmet bathing. In this anecdote-filled retrospective, Koren describes the gestation, evolution, and demise of his little-known, yet powerfully influential magazine.

Making WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, by Leonard Koren

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