Plazm (magazine)
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Plazm (magazine)

Plazm magazine has been published since 1991 by a collective of designers, writers, and others in Portland, Oregon, United States. The complete catalog of Plazm magazine is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Princeton University, and the Denver Art Museum.

Notable designers who have been affiliated with Plazm include David Carson, Art Chantry, Milton Glaser, Rebeca Mendez, Reza Abedini, Modern Dog, Scott Clum, John C. Jay, Bruce Licher, Frank Kozik, Pablo Medina, The Attik, Why Not Associates, and Ed Fella.

Contributing artists have included Raymond Pettibon, Todd Haynes, Storm Tharp, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Yoko Ono, Michael Brophy, Seripop, Rankin Renwick, Susan Seubert, and Terry Toedtemeier. Writers contributing to Plazm magazine include Julia Bryan-Wilson, Portland Monthly editor Randy Gragg, curator Stephanie Snyder, and Pere Ubu founder Dave Thomas, along with editors Jonathan Raymond and Tiffany Lee Brown.

The magazine has also run original pieces by interviewees, such as a handwritten fax-rant from Iggy Pop and faux McDonald's employment applications from Poison Ivy and Lux Interior of The Cramps.

Founders of the magazine were Patrick Bardel, Joshua Berger, Karynn Fish, Neva Knott, Andrew McFarlane, Rueben Niesenfeld. Plazm magazine editors have been Neva Knott (issues 1-9), Yariv Rabinovitch (issues 10-17), and Jonathan Raymond (issues 18-28). In 2005, Tiffany Lee Brown joined Jon Raymond as co-editor of the magazine, and Sarah Gottesdiener became the magazine's editorial coordinator and frequent contributor. In 2010, New Oregon Arts and Letters, a nonprofit organization, became the magazine's publisher.

The magazine started as a large-format newsprint quarterly publication and is now a thick, perfect-bound, four-color, book-style magazine published annually. The magazine's blog was launched in 2008 on plazm.com; local Portland newspaper The Oregonian wrote, "We always take Plazm's recommendations seriously" and "These guys are among the most creative characters in the city, though, and we've already bookmarked them." However, the newspaper noted that the blog's "first few entries seemed a little heavy on 'great typefaces we've known and loved'."

Urban Honking referred to Plazm's "octopus identity" that has "spread tentacles into Portland's creative world and far beyond."

Plazm Design was founded in 1995 by Joshua Berger, Pete McCracken and Niko Courtelis. The design firm has created brand identities, advertising, interactive and retail experiences, rich media content, video, broadcast commercials, editorial content, custom typography, books, and magazines.

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