Tracing the "quieter dread that sits beneath creative work" with Plates of Meat magazine

"The magazine is shrouded in biblical symbolism. Silva posits the King James Bible as the visual backbone of the issue. "The typography, the pacing of the text, even the use of white space," says Silva. "I wanted it to feel like a school Bible left in a drawer, the kind that's been scribbled on by bored kids waiting for the assembly to end.""

"Upon picking up a copy, you'll be met by artist Freddie Bannister's pencil study of the singer-songwriter Celeste. Silva takes inspiration from divine depictions of fear, and this sense of liminality is translated into the slow, aching process in the issue's creation. Both the front and back covers of the issue were created by Freddie, and the choice to have these created by the same artist is deliberate and devotional."

The magazine uses the King James Bible as a visual backbone, employing typography, pacing, and white space to evoke a well-thumbed school Bible. Hand-printed page numbers, ripped ephemera, and margin scribbles introduce blasphemous classroom sins and youthful chaos, signaling maturation from earlier impulsive issues. Front and back covers by the same artist create devotional symmetry: a pencil portrait of a singer-songwriter and a silhouetted man waiting in a car, representing the sacred and the stalled. The issue negotiates liminality and the tension between sincerity and its humiliation while questioning independent publishing's emphasis on taste over genuine risk.

Read at Itsnicethat