The Recess Guide To Re-Entering Society

posted by Emily Gosling July 8, 2021

No, it isn’t just you: getting back to “normal” life isn’t the purely joyful, seamless transition we might have hoped for. Yes, it’s great that pubs are back; that we can go to the cinema again; that 24-hour Asda isn’t the only nightlife destination in East London.

But for many of us, these brave new mask-laden worlds aren’t perhaps all we’d hoped they’d be. I’ve still not worked out how QR codes work; my phone’s too old to even think about downloading the track and trace app; social interactions have become strangely exhausting and in the early days of reopenings, it was a struggle to remember how to do conversations (so, I say something, then you say something, then repeat, then maybe one of us laughs? Something along those lines.)

Help is at hand, though. My personal top piece of advice is reminding everyone that phone calls are great, and that for the love of god, we really do not need to have every conversation on Zoom. But a new zine is on hand to offer far better, less curmudgeonly advice: The Recess Guide To Re-Entering Society.

The free zine is the creation of drinks brand Recess, a hemp-and adaptogen-infused sparkling water that promises to offer calm and clarity. The drink was launched firmly with the Insta-happy “creative class” in mind back in 2018, and bills itself as the “leader in relaxation and millennial existence.”

The Recess brand identity was created by boutique brand agency Day Job that uses Sharp Type’s Sharp Grotesk throughout Recess’ website, and product packaging.

The new zine looks to further the brand’s creative connections, featuring satirical content that ranges from “absurd how-to guides (dressing yourself for the real world, navigating a restaurant) to more abstract pieces such as a dream-like illustrated collage of all the things we should leave behind in 2020,” according to Recess.

The brand adds that the zine aims to “help to navigate the chaos of Summer 2021,” and that “While the guides are not entirely helpful in a literal sense, the comic relief they provide is precisely the thing we all need more than anything right now.”

The cover art was created by Brian Rea, illustrator for the New York Times’ Modern Love column; while other artists featured in the zine include New Yorker Cartoonist Liana Finick;Cerise Zelenetz; Mike Lacher; Chris (Simpsons Artist), and Kyle Ellington.

Rea’s cover illustration uses a cast of surreal, frequently blue-haired characters observed through a hole by a nervous protagonist, capturing the feeling of being an outsider-looking-in the the anxiety around returning to crowded, normal, socialised existence. captures the essence of anxiety of taking first steps back into polite society.

Inside, New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finick’s artwork also plays on the idea of anxiety using facial expressions to highlight the shared experience of nervousness and faking it til we make it.

Looking to offer advice (of a sort) around how to style your way out of the other side of a pandemic, Cerise Zelenetz’s black and white sketches use colourful overlays to “depict modern and out-there outfits,” as Recess puts it; while Rea also offers some handy advice around the very 2021 dating rules (“keep the conversation flowing by asking about your date’s reaction to the second vaccine.”

Other contributors include Mike Lacher, the man behind online projects such as How Bad Is Your Spotify?, and the folk who created the @afffirmations Instagram accept.

The brand is releasing content from the zine via Instagram, and a physical copy is being given away with every drink order until it runs out. It will also be distributed at local stores in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Nashville, San Francisco, and Chicago.

In addition to the physical zine, Recess opened a popup shop in New York’s Nolita neighbourhood on the weekend of 25 June. The popup design looks to recreate “classic magazine stores” featuring free zines and Recess for all.