Hello everyone! It’s been six months since our successful Kickstarter, and we’ve been hard at work on our first issue. Thanks to the humbling generosity of our backers, we had the opportunity to disappear and knuckle down for a while, interviewing and designing and editing and quibbling over details. But as we worked, a little side project started to form, a collection of interviews that grew to deserve its own spotlight.

We’re calling it Issue 8.5, but it’s really its own unique bud of creative effort. Don’t think of it as a preview of the magazine—more that the work that went into planning the redesign sort of became its own beast, and we wanted to see that through to conclusion. Six of our best writers talked with six of our favorite designers, and the resulting conversations range from a deep dive into Marc ten Bosch’s enigmatic Miegakure to a look at the pain that underlies Jenny Jiao Hsia’s resolutely kawaii body of work.

Featuring the photography of David McDowell and the design work of Justin Kielbasa, Issue 8.5 is an exciting step toward the full redesign our backers funded. It’s also us thanking our readership the only way we know—that is, by giving you more of the very work you’ve shown your faith in.

You can get Issue 8.5 when it drops later this month by pre-ordering Issue 9 of our relaunched magazine, or subscribing. We hope you do that, and we hope you like it. We’re excited to unveil the full redesign soon.

Header image: and the blue is near at the paperworld by Assumpta