Transcript
Dan Rubenstein (0:00)
Hi, I'm Dan Rubenstein, and this is the Grand Tourist. I've been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food and travel. All the elements of a well lived life. But it's not just a podcast anymore. On today's special little episode, I'm announcing our first ever print issue of the Grand Tourist, launching today for sale online@thegrandtourist.net. but let me back up first. I started the grand tourist back in 2021 as a kind of creative outlet during the depths of the pandemic lockdown. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be speaking to you today. More than 130 episodes later this fall, I decided to take things to the next level with the Grand Tourist. Not just as a podcast, but as a brand of sorts. A whole universe of creativity. For every episode of the most recent season, from Liz Diller to David Yurman, we commissioned the most wonderful portraits of our guests and converted audio episodes into fully illustrated stories. Then, adding to that, we found hundreds of pages of incredible stories from across the globe. From an inside look at a Berlin museum that's rarely visited to a photographic journey down the River Nile and other various deep conversations with artists and designers from Tunisia and South Korea to Los Angeles and Oxford. This first print issue's whopping 364 pages are collected in a linen hardcover book that will be sold in select bookstores and online. With three exciting covers. We printed it all in Belgium with some silky smooth paper that is heavenly to behold. It's a real labor of love and a keepsake I hope will grace your bookshelves and coffee tables for years to come. There are dozens of talents that took part in this incredible adventure, but today we're going to say a quick hello to two of them. Our creative director, Matthias Ernstberger, who helped translate the purely audio universe into three dimensions. And my beloved illustrator, Zebedee Helm, who you might know from his fantastical drawings that are all over the Grand Tourists on our website and Instagram account, who greatly contributed to the issue.
Zebedee Helm (2:20)
Well, thank you guys for joining me. This is obviously a very special little episode we have going here just to toast the launch of the first print issue of the Grand Tourist. So why don't we start off, and Zebedee, you've been sort of collaborating with the Grand Tourist for a couple of years now, and can you just tell everybody a little bit about your background in illustration and tell us everybody about yourself?
Matthias Ernstberger (2:45)
Well, I Started off in fine art and doing abstract paintings, quite cartoony, but I got more and more into sort of the narrative angle and they became more and more satirical. And eventually at one of my exhibitions, someone recommended that I should actually send that picture off to a satirical newspaper, which I did, and they published it. So I realized that I've sort of quite unconsciously crossed a line and become a cartoonist. So I continued along that line for a while and which. Which I really enjoyed because it meant that I could speak to people, which, being an artist, you never did. Anyway, I quite quickly got discovered by Sue Crew, who was then the editor of House and Garden, and I was asked to become the illustrator in chief for House and Garden, which I did for about five years. And from there I got other jobs, like working for Art Review, doing cartooning and illustration, but more illustration, because there isn't so much money in cartooning. But I always loved the sort of the satirical side of things. And then I worked for the FT for a bit doing more political stuff and animations. And in the background, I was doing children's books for adults and children's books for children, obviously, I was doing children's books and illustrated books for adults. And so everything was connected by a sort of humorous element. And then I got work doing. Working in, yes, fashion houses started approaching me, so I worked formes and the Row doing interesting things for them. And what I loved was that I was able to access all the worlds that I was interested in because I'm full of curiosity. So, yes, it's just all generally sort of appealed to that. And I worked for Fortnum and Masons for a long time doing various things for them, including recently four enormous murals on all four floors of there. Working in a restaurant in Frankfurt doing satirical portraits of famous people called Frank. A series of maps for the row. And I'm collaborating with the Albers foundation at the moment, doing a couple of books for them.