DUF comes out once every two years, is about 300 pages thick, packed with fasci­nating facts and fun items, and it looks like a book. But that’s not what it is. The inventive design and dazzling variety of columns, articles, photos, illustrations and cartoons invite the reader to treat DUF as a magazine and to keep picking it up to take another look. This is what prompted creators Petra Boers and Suzanne Hertogs to dub their unique concept a ‘magazine book’ back in 2006.

The third edition of DUF has the theme of getting wise to media tricks and Boers and Hertogs recommend it as a ‘must-have for every independent teenage thinker’. They are absolutely right. Striking the perfect tone for readers of this age group, with clever puns and colourful and appealing design, they present the modern ‘screenager’ with a convincing account of the crazy and manipulative ruses of the modern media, without ever turning it into a lecture.

From hilarious hypes, political propa­ganda, historical falsification, ‘happiness buttons’ that advertisers know how to press, six ‘porn myths’ (complete with ‘media-free sex tips’), to the cunning art of Photoshop and the idea that there’s ‘no such thing as a free lunch’, they cleverly unveil the world of illusions in which we live and remind the reader that ‘a critical mind is a joy forever’.

Remember that slogan – because deceit is lurking even within the pages of DUF itself. One interview deliberately features product placement and the ‘real-life’ report about young people with ‘Facebook depres­sion’ who ritually ‘kill off’ their virtual world turns out to be a hoax.

Yes, DUF: Get Wise! challenges the reader, with quizzes, puzzles, puns and poems. Featuring top-quality work from contributors ranging from famous Dutch author Arnon Grunberg to philosopher and writer Bas Haring and plenty of fascinating and talented newcomers, DUF has proven once again – in terms of both design and content – that it is the perfect medium for drawing in modern young people, wire­lessly, on ordinary paper.