California Dreaming: The latest issue of A Rabbit’s Foot is about the inventors and innovators of our movie-making culture

Issue 13 of the London-based film culture magazine A Rabbit’s Foot was about ‘tomorrow’. The editor in chief, Charles Finch, celebrated the future of film, the enduring value of artistic craftsmanship and the embrace of “true learning” in the face of AI. The newest issue of A Rabbit’s Foot looks at another type of future, one that was dreamed up and projected in California, the ‘land of tomorrow’. But this issue is taking a look at what Charles calls the “lesser-known side” of California, its soulful and urban edges, filled with the ingenuity, inventors and innovators of our visual culture. It’s Nice That spoke to designer and creative director of A Rabbit’s Foot, Fatima Khan, who also runs the London-based design studio Broad Peak Studio.

“For me, cinema, graphic design, photography and writing are never separate disciplines, they’re all forms of world-building. They shape how we see, how we interpret culture and how we imagine ourselves within it,” says Fatima. “A film can transport you through narrative and image; a magazine can do the same through sequencing, typography, pacing and paper.” ARF is a magazine that’s locally-designed and globally-focused – with photography developed in local film labs and pages printed at Park Printers in East London, a tight-knit approach shapes how these globe-trotting stories feel grounded and specially chosen for readers. Inspired by magazines such as vintage editions of The Face, Nova, Jonas Mekas’ Film Culture, Eros, Omni, Photo, early Lui, Interview, and Ebony, which Fatima would hunt for on eBay or car boot sales, A Rabbit’s Foot is a testament to the charm of a well-designed page, which always beats the flattened, monotonous scrolling of an iPhone.

Collaboration is a big part of A Rabbit Foot’s ethos: in 2024, ARF launched the Noir issue, for which the team collaborated with Nadia Lee Cohen to reimagine a photograph by Enquire Mentendes, marking a turning point for the magazine. Following that, ARF produced an iconic shoot of Sean Baker and Mikey Madison in celebration of Anora, a five-time Oscar award winning flick. The tightly curated creative concept, inspired by a 1976 image by David Bailey, resulted in a cover that became a collector’s issue.

Fatima brings design experience from her time working at Pentagram in London before and throughout Covid, which she describes as a “rigorous education in analogue design at a time when the industry was under real pressure”. Working under John Rushworth, the experience instilled a belief that strong work is built on the concept that every typographic choice, layout decision and production detail should be rooted in a clear idea – and in the process, a focus on physical art objects should actively support the production ecosystem behind it.

Hollywood isn’t just a place anymore, it’s an idea – it’s walking away from explosions, it’s the third act redemption story in romcoms or golden skin on a silver screen. The iconic images we’ve all fallen in love have been, as Anthony Kiedis sings, “made in a Hollywood basement” – so the team behind A Rabbit’s Foot reinvents California through an alternate vision, aware of how movie-making is one patch in the giant quilt of our visual ideas. As Fatima says: “cinema influences design, design frames photography, photography shapes narrative and writing anchors it all. When these elements are considered together, you don’t just produce content, you create a cultural object.” That’s why the team elected to go beyond the cliches of Hollywood and aimed for singular voices across film, music and literature, featuring artists such as Jeff Bridges, Boots Riley, Charles Burnett, Ottessa Moshfegh and Alana Haim – “the California dreamers”.

It’s not just all original material, but archival materials used originally. The magazine is designed to allow Corina Kent’s iconic signage-art and 70s film set photography to sit alongside wonderfully painted illustrations of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Jeff Buckley, as well as page layouts that encourage an engaging reading experience. The reason why each issue remains imaginative and passionate is likely because the core team consists of six people who have been there since the very start. “We keep it small at first, letting ideas and images circulate quietly, testing, pushing, sometimes letting them collide,” says Fatima. “Certain themes linger, while others only reveal themselves once we’ve spent time with the material. There’s a method to the madness.”

Veering away from the magazine’s usual cinematic aesthetic, Fatima chose an “emotional realism” for this black-and-white shoot, capturing each subject’s presence, personality and authenticity, achieved with Alexander Roth’s styling and set design by Alice Jacobs, who sourced vintage items for nearly every cover. “We start with a detailed creative brief, often a moodboard deck filled with film, art and cultural references, which sets the direction for the shoot. Many of these references come from printed magazines and books rather than scraping the internet (which I don’t trust), there’s a depth and tactility there you can’t find online,” says Fatima. Commissioning always begins with a “curious brief”, with every cover as a creative task – Fatima and her team always leave room for intuition and interpretation, which is what makes the faces we’ve seen time and time again feel new.