Magma

Magma’s hit or miss. I found my ultimate all time artist, Jon Burgerman, here, but recently I haven’t been a fan of the selection. However, I feel you just have to hunt a bit and keep checking in which I am glad to do! Price range is great and the employees are very approachable.

This is a great bookshop for lovers of design and unusual art and self-​published books. I always love to roam around in this shop. I love their one in Manchester too which is a little larger and nicer to be in. In a nice neighborhood of London with other interesting shops nearby around 7 dials.

Killer bookshop that cuts right to the chase and offers up a staggering selection of wallet-​draining volumes. Responsible for making my suitcase at least 40lbs heavier.

Yes trendy, yes quirky…
Customer service? Another story. Terrible. Broken promises, fictitious emails. Online items not available but but money taken from bank account. And then complain to the manager as requested by shopfoor staff, not even a reply back.
Don’t bother…

Little bookshop with great design, urban, art, and DIY books. Perfect place for quirky gifts, and they have a small collection of prints you can buy and get framed for your flat

If you are artistically inclined, Magma is an absolute must for you. This book and magazine store is a veritable wealth of all things art and design related. What I like about it, is that the stores focus is on what is happening in today’s market rather than having shelves full of musty old tomes.
The downside of Magma is the expense. Books here are considerably more expensive than the same copies in the likes of Foyles and Waterstones. My trick is to see what Magma has, then buy it elsewhere. Sorry guys, you are very cool, but just too expensive.

Make my heart go giddy up. Anything I have ever bought here as a present for someone has never failed to please. The place is full of fantastic things, things you want, things you won’t want to give away once you get them home. But be generous and give it up, after all, most things in this place have little use except in giving pleasure and isn’t that the greatest gift of all? It’s kinda pricey though so expect to part with a wee wad of cash or, if you’re strapped, cross to the other side of the street as you pass to avoid temptation and the inevitable rude letter from the bank manager when you fail to pay your credit card bill that month.

Magma is a treat for art geeks, design geeks, graphic novel geeks, pop culture geeks, and just geeks full stop. Sure, if you went to Forbidden Planet, you could get t-​shirts, badges, graphic novels and action figures, but they wouldn’t have quite the same flair or edge. Plus they have just about every art and design magazine under the sun. The perfect place to find a little something for yourself or your artsy friends.

Fun fun fun! I like this shop lots! It’s full of things to look at and things to play with. Shops that are full of things to play with make me happy.
Shops that are full of beautiful Rob Ryan stuff make me even happier. Lovely pretty wonderful stuff. Of course, you’re buying expensive things, and some of it really isn’t worth the price, but if you’ve ever wondered where in London you can buy a laptop case that looks like a windows folder, this is the place.

Magma is a fantastic bookstore that caters specifically to modern designers. Animators, graphic designers, brand designers or any person who appreciates these fields will find fantastic reference material in here. It’s a small shop so discounts are rare, but it doesn’t matter because the staff here is very knowledgeable about design and the extra price you pay for a book will be like a tip for the service you receive. Whether you’re a fledgling designer or a hardcore professional you’ll find so much sweet stuff in this shop.

I’ve visited Magma many times, but it’s usually for a good browse in the classic ‘you’d wonder what they’ll come up with next’ tradition. Honestly, how on earth do those cooler-​than-​thee graphics people do it? You might think they would get sick of another hardback children’s adventure story featuring the hero Helvetica 19pt, but no, yet another installment appears on Magma’s vaunted shelves. Seriously though, I do enjoy nosing through the many and mad concept books and mags that Magma stocks. I wonder who buys them, if anyone ever buys those little plastic manga toys (and what they then do with them) and if I can justify buying yet another e-​Boy poster. All in all, a unique shop, fantastic eye and brain candy, but one that I’ll remain a committed window-​patron of for the forseeable future.

This shop is mind-​blowing for its inspirational range of design books and magazines that you never knew existed. You will be blinded by the array of talent on show and, like me, might be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity. It’s a visual onslaught of the highest quality and you’ll want to devour it all. Sadly, the prices will probably dictate you can’t, and you’ll head to the internet instead. I buy Amelia’s magazine in here though, as it’s cheaper without postage — this is probably the case for some other mags too. Either way, it’s worth stepping in for a browse — so much beauty in one place is definitely worth a look.

Magma boasts an impressive stock of art, design and architecture books, all crammed in to this small shop. It stocks Taschen books too, which is great.
I love looking around in here, although with online prices much cheaper it’s best to actually purchase from the net, but looking around bookshops is one of life’s pleasures!
They sell some great little nic naks in here; i got a ‘Who Tall Are You?’ height chart, so you could see your height compared to celebs. Everyone hated it until they were the same height as someone really fit!
Worth popping in if you’re in the area.

If you can be bothered to get the tube to central London, battle through all the lost tourists at Covent Garden or Leicester Square and then fight the hoards hovering around the overcrowded doors of Magma, it’s well worth going in.
If it’s obscure, trendy and in magazine format, Magma has it. They also have a great selection of art books, trinkety gadgets and DVDs. It’s ideal for present shopping, especially for people you don’t know that well as they stock lots of generic stocking filler type things like stickers with the slogan «wake me up at Finsbury Park/​Shephard’s Bush/​Elephant and Castle, etc. I am personally a fan of any humour that relates directly to the British penchant for public displays of alcoholism.
This is one of the best places in London to get those coffee table books with pictures of trainers and or graffiti, for those people on your Christmas list who are either a little bit dull or got you something of a similarly thoughtless calibre last year.

Most design industry folk will applaud Magma’s range of interior, graphic and fashion design books and magazines. With so many good books I get overwhelmed, it’s just as well I can’t reach the ones on the top shelves.
Mind you I’m unlikely to ask for help as the service is arrogantly unhelpful. With shopping online at cheaper prices, I would assume it’s probably not a great idea to alienate customers. The books do come in at a premium price so I feel a little reluctant to spend my cash here.

Magma is the place to go if you are looking for books or magazines within the creative genre. I was after a new fashion and photography publication which I couldn’t seem to find anywhere else but Magma luckily had it stocked. They also sell various books on textile design, fashion photography and generally anything art based.
The staff seem genuinely interested in the books and magazines and they leave you free to browse which makes the whole experience much more relaxed. I imagine it would be quite a nice place to work! I always leave with a great coffee table magazine — it is a pleasure to shop here.

Magmabooks has a great selection of design, comic, photography, art, fashion and some other random creative books. Even though the shop is tiny I can easily spend an hour just browsing around. If I have difficulties of buying a present for someone, usually I find something from here. They sell mostly pretty independent books so not the ones you would find from a average book store. The selection of magazines is also impressive.

Well worth a visit this shop with a little bit of everything design related. It majors on books, but has some great T-​shirts, posters, magazines, figurines, toys, mugs etc. It’s pretty small but its got stock up to the top of a pretty high ceilinged room so there are lots of things to catch your eye.
It’s a little curio of a shop — it’s ranked in ‘art galleries in London’ in Qype I see, which I think sums it up as I wouldn’t know where else to put it!
Oh its also got very cheery and helpful staff as well. Check out there website for a little look at what they do and then get yourself along there for a nosey. It’s a great place to browse even if you don’t find anything that takes your fancy.

This is a designer and artist’s haven for books, DVD, posters, magazines and t-​shirts. If you’re a student this is the perfect place to start your research or just get inspired. It not only contains all up-​to-​date magazines but also has some of the best creative advertising books around.
The shop itself is quite small inside but the shelves go way up high and you can even get vinyl figures of certain artists characters and even story books by directors such as Tim Burton.
A place to browse and wish you could take everything home with you.

This is a really unique find. On a road off of Charing cross heading toward Seven dials is the new Magma gift shop. There has always been a shop there which has sold design books especially Japanese comic style stuff and that’s still there, but their new shop is fab. Everything is conceptually designed and really quirky. They sell all kinds of things from funky mugs, original note books, keyfobs, wall hangings allsorts of odds and oddities but every single piece is either beautiful or comes with a great sense of humour. You’ll have to pay a visit to really see what I mean but if you are after a truly original modern gift, this is the shop for you.