Last night, the Tommy Hilfiger store in Soho played party host to “Rebranding America,” a collection of visuals redefining the country’s image that are featured in the new “design issue” of Paper magazine. More interesting than seeing the already familiar advertising concepts strung up in a luxury retailer, was a footnote printed inside the magazine that might be the worst attempt at explaining the new issue’s anorexic look. It’s not that they have less ads, it’s part of an “art project”:

There are 10 additional pages of this story that can be found this month at Papermag.com. Designer-artist Tobias Wong has “moved” them from the story as his contribution to “InDisposed,” an exhibition on display during this month’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Wong’s conceptual piece makes the environmental statement that by deleting 10 pages from the issue, roughly 13 trees are saved and Paper’s footprint is slightly decreased for the month.

The positive environmental impact of thinning out the issue is noble, but calling it conceptual art is Paper rebranding their cost cutting measures to deal with print’s overall plummeting ad revenues. And while there are some spare solutions for America’s image problem on the magazine’s website, there’s no mention of Tobias Wong, the artist who saved Paper magazine tens of thousands of dollars in printing costs.

Anyway, below are some photos from last night’s party, including the “Rebranding America” works of Shepard Fairey, Steve Powers, Ron English, and George Lois among others.