200 million is surely a fabricated number right? It’s either the fantastical demands of a child deciding upon the number of presents they’d like for Christmas, or it’s the sum total of an evil Bond villains bank account.
Could it really be the amount of Big Issue’s sold over it’s 25 year history? I can’t even begin to calculate how much money has been raised and goodness blossomed from all those sales. Amazing!
What better way to celebrate than with three exclusively designed covers by artist Ben Eine, whose large-scale, brightly coloured typography can be seen gracing shop-front shutters, walls and products (recent collaborations with the fashion and beauty industry) all over the world. I visited Ben in his studio to capture his work process whilst creating the covers. As you can imagine, a print studio is simply the coolest place: coloured inks, paints, stationary (god I love stationary), a dog, cake, awesome artworks, another dog, spray paint, big printers, brilliantly interesting print makers talking about the process of screenprinting, those super cool round glasses that make people look really bookish, Dennis the Menace jumpers, a rooftop overlooking East London. Jealous Print Studio really has it all in abundance. Coupled with the fact that Ben is a really nice, down to earth guy and was happy to spray paint towards my camera on a windy rooftop, I didn’t want to leave. In fact, I almost didn’t owing to getting lost on the stairwell and repeatedly walking up and down onto each floor, hoping that I didn’t have to go back up and ask the cool people for directions down what was essentially a one exit staircase (at the bottom, duh).

This week you can get your mitts on all three versions (please do) and help the magazine begin it’s journey to celebrating another 200 million (billion, trillion, zillion x infinity) issue sales.