PLAZM Portland, Oregon since 1991 portland, oregon since 1991. plazm magazine
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12/24/2025
Happy holidays everyone. There’s no bad time to be Magnanimous, but the holiday season is a particularly good one. To be...
12/24/2025

Happy holidays everyone. There’s no bad time to be Magnanimous, but the holiday season is a particularly good one. To be magnanimous means to have a noble, generous, or unselfish spirit. May this seasonal beer from Fort George Brewery bring more magnanimity to all those it touches.

Speaking of beers made from trees ... Did you make it to the first annual Beer Tree Festival at Fort George earlier this month? If not, we advise you to be on the look out for that next year 🌲🍺❤️!

You can still get Magnanimous IPA. Every year, a group of friends and family from Fort George head out to to hand-harvest the fresh growth Grand Fir that goes into Magnanimous IPA. A special treat to be sure. This beer can be shipped directly to your door if you are lucky enough to live in Oregon via the Fort George website, while supplies last.

One of our favorite can designs created in collaboration with our good friend illustrator .long_

Resist! New book in the exceptional Poster Collection series from Museum für Gestaltung Zürich published by Lars Müller ...
12/05/2025

Resist! New book in the exceptional Poster Collection series from Museum für Gestaltung Zürich published by Lars Müller Publishers.

The Poster Museum collects Plazm works as part of their archive. This publication includes a couple of our works in addition to many other great pieces.

Article by The Daily Heller here:

What is the true role of the political poster today?

Back in 2021 our friend  asked us to help save a beautiful giant Sequoia that was targeted for removal ... we created a ...
11/27/2025

Back in 2021 our friend asked us to help save a beautiful giant Sequoia that was targeted for removal ... we created a poster and postcard campaign to help raise awareness featuring a photograph taken by ... Those images are shown in the last three images of this post. Unfortunately the tree was poisoned, forcing it to be cut down. Letter carrier and artist Fred Dieter saved pieces of wood from this special tree and created some beautiful objects. These will be available this Sunday - pictures and words below by Rankin:

"Hey good people. Remember Mother Sequoia? Well, my best mail delivery person in the world, Fred, saved some chunks of her and has been busy, turning bowls out of her wood. It’s pretty crazy how light these bowls are, that such a soft wood could make such a gigantic tree. And all the variation of color that is in within her wood. Fred will be hanging out at The Bye and Bye this Sunday afternoon, if you’re interested in checking them out.
I have one and it is a gift to be able to have something so beautiful, that came out of such a crazy story.
Mother Sequoia lives on!"

One more week to catch the Stephen Hayes  exhibition at  - there are two distinct but related bodies of work: Elegy and ...
11/25/2025

One more week to catch the Stephen Hayes exhibition at - there are two distinct but related bodies of work: Elegy and Wild Beauty: Remembered. Each are deeply beautiful.

From the Elizabeth Leach website:

With Elegy, Hayes asks us to bring our attention to the immediate and historic tragedy of war. In this case, it is the war in Gaza. These twelve, large, non-image-based paintings form a cycle that repeats ad infinitum and are arranged as either single panels or diptych pairings; an arrangement that will change three times over the run of the exhibition. The consequence of repeated re-pairing provokes an unsettling sense of impermanence and dislocation. In all of his paintings, color is paramount, and certainly in these works, as it is color that is asked to convey the soul of each artwork.

We are longtime fans of first published Stephen's "River Series" in Plazm No. 7, 1994, spread shown here was designed by .

On view through Nov. 29

Plazm No. 7 is sold out, two copies remain available for museum and library collections, drop us a note if you are interested. Plazm No. 7 cover by shown in the last image.

New poster and animation for Red Bull Theater — The Boys From Syracuse — this is a one night only benefit concert. Decem...
11/19/2025

New poster and animation for Red Bull Theater — The Boys From Syracuse — this is a one night only benefit concert. December 15 in NYC - find details and get tickets on the Red Bull Theater page.

Always a pleasure to collaborate with Mr. Ed Fotheringham !

Clara Maria Apostolatos reports in Hyperallergic on Coco Fusco's first US retrospective. Coco contributed to Plazm issue...
11/16/2025

Clara Maria Apostolatos reports in Hyperallergic on Coco Fusco's first US retrospective. Coco contributed to Plazm issue No. 13 (the corporate sponsored issue), 1996

In her first US retrospective, she becomes museum specimen, interrogator, colonial queen, and more to expose the systems that produce them.

Plus Plus  at this excellent  Festival of Tomorrow event on November 16th. Reading & screening. Details below in the off...
11/08/2025

Plus Plus

at this excellent Festival of Tomorrow event on November 16th. Reading & screening. Details below in the official text.

++
Join Portland author and screenwriter Jon Raymond, poet and essayist and author and creative writing professor for a evening of readings from their acclaimed published works including Raymond’s new book God and S*x—a candid, deeply considered exploration of desire, morality, and the human search for meaning, Wells’s new book The Fire Passage—a lyric descent in the epic tradition, traveling unto realms unmoored by extreme weather and mysterious illness, and Zumas’s Wolf Bells—a biting, lyrical novel about an intergenerational group home run by an ex-musician.

Following the reading, we’ll screen Dreams (S*x Love), a poignant and sharply observed drama from Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud.
++

Every election is important. We believe democracy works best when we all participate and exercise our right to vote. It ...
11/04/2025

Every election is important. We believe democracy works best when we all participate and exercise our right to vote.

It is even more important this year when our fundamental rights are directly under attack by the current administration.

If you live in California, your vote has national implications. Please vote YES on California’s Proposition 50, also known as the "Election Rigging Response Act." This is a countermeasure against mid-cycle partisan redistricting efforts in Texas and other states.

We created this voter engagement art leading up to the November 2018 midterm election.

(happening this week, BTW) invited to sit on a Citizen Designer panel with , Michael Ellsworth of & Jen Thomas , moderated by Nishat Akhtar. You can find a recording of the conversation on our YouTube channel.

We set up a station where people could get their fists painted and photographed. shot the photos and painted V O T E on people's fists.

Ai Weiwei essay commissioned for a German newspaper. They then refused to publish it. Read it in Hyperallergic
10/21/2025

Ai Weiwei essay commissioned for a German newspaper. They then refused to publish it. Read it in Hyperallergic

A German newspaper commissioned an article from me but then refused to publish it.

Great to find this new issue of Emergency Horse in Eugene ... It's been a minute since there was an issue but this looks...
10/12/2025

Great to find this new issue of Emergency Horse in Eugene ... It's been a minute since there was an issue but this looks and feels like it did in the 90s …

The first edition of Emergency Horse, a free newsprint periodical, was published in 1991, the same year that we published issue number one of Plazm magazine.

This issue of the Horse features interviews, essays, poetry, a report on the fentanyl pipeline, and an essay and interview about new gatherings at the Kesey Farm. Plazm Editor contributed an interview with ChatGPT, shown here.

Put down your phone and pick up a copy…

09/28/2025

Following up on our previous post showing new work for Red Bull Theater made in collaboration with photographer .

Andrew has shot for Plazm magazine (issues 24, 28) and also sat down with us for an OnCreativity interview. Here's part 2 where he discusses the nature of creativity, the creative process and the importance of not knowing.⠀

"You can't engage with your curiosity if you're worried about being wrong" ⠀
—Andrew Zuckerman

With the “OnCreativity” series, Plazm explores the nature of creativity and how it works via informal interviews with designers, artists, musicians, animators, and educators. Like creativity itself, their differing points of view inspire, provoke, confuse, and delight.

Directed by DP .c.bryant

Explore more OnCreativity videos at www.oncreativity.tv or via link in bio.

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Portland Oregon since 1991

The History of Plazm

Plazm is a creative studio founded in Portland, Ore., in 1991 with the launch of Plazm magazine. Together with our clients, we solve problems, tell stories, and seek out truth.

Context

Plazm magazine started as a cooperatively published, not-for-profit periodical that sparked a nascent creative community in early 1990s Portland. As the magazine garnered accolades and awards, it spawned a commercial design and branding firm whose clients have included Nike, LucasFilm, and MTV, along with local businesses and nonprofits such as PICA, the Northwest Film Center, and Fort George Brewery.