MacGuffin #12 The Log

A beautifully crafted Dutch magazine about the life of ordinary things. Like Hitchcock’s MacGuffins, these objects never take center stage, yet they quietly shape the narrative and spin the most intricate plots around themselves. A bed, a window, and a rope — these were the themes of its first issues. On the pages of the magazine, such mundane objects are revealed from unexpected angles, connecting people of various professions and appearing across all forms of art.

In 2016, the magazine won the top international prize for independent publishing, the Stack Awards.

MacGuffin Nº12 The Log takes a walk in the woods to explore the design and politics of timber. From the last Norwegian trunks that floated down the Glomma to the indigenous logs that help map the Amazon, and from Jamaican lacebark trees to online chatbots: meet the logs that function as totems, design tools, oracles, wormholes, comic figures, activist artworks, village idiots, prison cells, logbooks, nightmares and dreams. Featuring: James Beckett, Basje Boer, Doriana Falcón, Formafantasma, José Bessa Freire, Rudy Guedj, Eliot Haworth, Khaled Jarrar, Emily King, Kai Lobjakas, Jente Posthuma, Olga Prader, Ellef Prestsæter,  Lou-Lou van Staaveren, SulSolSal, Mirelle van Tulder, and many more.

Netherlands / eng. / 21×28 cm / 224 pages / 0.6 kg.