The Luddite

‘It’s distracting and we lose focus so we want to slow that down a little bit and tell the human stories that we think are missing in our technology filled world today’.

Looking to address this technological overload, Armstrong has paired up with fellow publisher Matt Davis to launch The Luddite – a new handcrafted magazine, beautifully created using letterpress printing by Hand & Eye Letterpress manager Phil Abel.

The magazine espouses the mantra ‘because life is analogue’, looking to focus on slowing things down a bit through quirky articles and gorgeous illustrations by Hannah Simpson and Christopher Brown.

The project came into being through a successful Kisktarter campaign, which allowed for the naissance of the eight-page publication, which is limited to an edition of 600 copies.

The first issue features stories including that of a midwife, who reflects on how new parents’ predilection for photographing their new babies with their smartphones sees many drop the devices on their precious offsprings’ heads; and ‘a first-person confessional piece about a hipster Viking lookalike, Jay Williams, who turned to weightlifting as a way to rebel against life’s modern rubbish’, we’re told.

Davis and Armstrong say, ‘We realised that between us we’ve spent 40 years on the Internet, which is a bit weird. And while we both earn our livings using pixels, are we missing out on something? 

‘Perhaps technology could be changing our lives in a bad way—getting in the way of as many interactions as it facilitates, and even re-wiring our brain chemistry. Are we turning into junky lab rats in a bad experiment?’

 Copies of The Luddite will be initially be available in London at Lois gallery  in Peckham (http://www.lois.me.uk/), Material gallery (http://www.materialmaterial.com/) in Shoreditch, or through (perhaps ironically) the website  (http://theludditemagazine.tumblr.com)