Colors, the lush quarterly published in three bilingual editions by Fabrica (the communications research center of Benetton), recently launched its money-themed winter issue in San Francisco, where the Italy-based magazine has teamed up with the Italian Cultural Institute and the Academy of Art University San Francisco to celebrate its 17-year publishing history. Last Thursday's presentation by the Colors editorial and creative directors at the Academy's 79 Gallery was so packed that we hear a trio of Dwell magazine staffers (chair lovers if ever there were) took in the lecture while sitting on the floor. The gallery was decked out with a giant podium made of flattened copies of the new issue (pictured above) and photographs from it. Meanwhile, the Italian Cultural Institute is hosting an exhibition of all 73 Colors covers through May 17.

"In their usual (i.e., unusual) fashion, Colors has provided us a candid look at something so common as to be taken for granted, yet has profound impact on our day-to-day lives," says Phil Hamlett, graduate director of the School of Graphic Design at Academy of Arts University. Fronted by a doodle-laden 100-dollar bill that aims to question the role of money and society's relationship to it, the money issue of Colors, "a magazine about the rest of the world," features entrepreneurs that aren't likely to ever make it onto the pages of Forbes. The editors began work on the issue by sending out-of-circulation cash to a lab for testing. The trace substances found on the money (including blood, ash, cocaine, soil, and skin) form the magazines's sections. "The substances make up not only the chemistry of money but also its very essence -- metaphors for non-conventional payments, inheritances, savings, transactions, bankruptcies, and loans," write the editors in their introduction.

And so, from an opening shot of 24 tongues overlayed with slang for money in various languages and a x660 magnification of a contaminated banknote, the magazine delves into the lives of those who make a living by sorting rubbish in Brazil or designing womenswear for Second Life avatars from a computer in Washington, pay for groceries and bet on cockfights with cocaine in southern Colombia, and struggle to afford black market blood in Baghdad. "The Money Issue quickly points out that money isn't what you think it is," says Mary Scott, the chairperson of the School of Graphic Design at Academy of Arts University. "It is a function of culture and need. If I had to go kill two pigs to buy a lipstick, or find some boar tusks to buy medicine for my sick child, I would probably choose differently."