“From weakness you make something strong...” Laurent Laporte is editor and founder of Where is the Cool?, the French magazine that presents readers with an eclectic and totally original selection of things that it has decreed are cool. In this conversation he shares his thoughts on turning weakness into strength (he’s not a journalist, which is why you won’t find long written articles in the magazine); the ongoing struggle of independent publishing; and why this thing absolutely has to be a prin...
Jul 05, 2019•27 min
"Magazines were magical to me – they transported me to somewhere else..." Marvin Scott Jarrett launched Ray Gun in 1992, working with the designer David Carson to create one of the most radical and influential magazines of the decade. After becoming disillusioned with the music industry in the late 90s (he didn't like boy bands) he went on to launch Nylon magazine in 1999, pioneering a publishing model that embraced both print and digital. He's now released a book with Rizzoli looking back at Ra...
Jun 27, 2019•25 min
"Satire is an interesting weapon, but it's been co-opted by the establishment." Freddie Marsh is one of the editors of The Fence, the satirical magazine that launched in London earlier this year. In this conversation Freddie explains why he and his fellow founders were inspired to produce a new satirical magazine, why it's important that politics is just one part of what they cover, and why The Fence needed to exist in print.
Jun 21, 2019•24 min
"You're constantly trying to break it..." Seb Emina is the editor of The Happy Reader, the literary magazine made for Penguin Books by the publishers of Fantastic Man. The 13th issue is out now, featuring Hollywood star Owen Wilson alongside Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and Seb dropped into the Stack office to speak about the making of the magazine, and why its simple structure encourages him to play with ever more ambitious and eccentric editorial ideas.
Jun 14, 2019•27 min
"We have money all of a sudden!" Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is the editor of gal-dem, the magazine made by women of colour and non-binary people of colour, which made an immediate impact when its first print issue launched in 2016. They've been working hard since then to increase their reach, for example with their takeover of The Guardian's Weekend magazine last year, and this week saw the release of their first book, I Will Not be Erased. I caught up with Charlie to speak about the rapid growth o...
Jun 07, 2019•27 min
"It's world peace for publishers..." Nikki Simpson is the woman behind the International Magazine Centre, a proposed hub for publishers and anyone who works with magazines. Aiming to launch in Edinburgh in 2022, Nikki wants to bring together all kinds of magazines, from the biggest corporate titles to the smallest independent outfits, helping them to build connections between one another and using strength in numbers to draw wider attention to magazines that might otherwise be overlooked. In thi...
May 30, 2019•19 min
"I want to inspire more women to have a career in type..." Amber Weaver is the author of Femme Type, an all-female publication about type design and typography. While studying graphic design at university she noticed that the type projects covered in the books she found in the library were invariably created by men, so she started her own list of great work done by women. The list continued to grow after she left university and joined People of Print, and she saw the opportunity to create the bo...
May 24, 2019•18 min
"I want it to feel like you're having a chat with a friend." Maria Ilana Moore is editor of Dear Movies, the zine that collects personal writing about films and TV shows. Launched at the end of 2017 as a staple-bound, black-and-white publication that Maria made along with "a few of my film-y friends", it has grown into a thicker zine with a proper perfect bound spine and an international roster of collaborators. But there's no chance of it getting any bigger – Maria is clear that her unassuming ...
May 17, 2019•23 min
"Some countries just feel the world should not be watching..." Rachael Jolley is the editor of Index on Censorship, the 47-year-old title dedicated to promoting freedom of expression. Rachael has been in the editor's chair for the last five years, and in this conversation she speaks about the changes she has made in that time, cultivating a network of contributing editors in countries like Turkey, Mexico and China that allows the magazine to give a local perspective from places that can be diffi...
May 10, 2019•25 min
"A city is a text for us..." Natassa Pappa is the editor and creative director of Desired Landscapes, a magazine that looks deeply into cities to discover the stories and quirks that make those places unique. Small and compact, it's based on the classic pocket guide book and the plain typographic cover doesn't give any indication of the strange and whimsical stories the magazine contains within. In this episode she explains the inspirations that led to this unique magazine in disguise, as well a...
Apr 26, 2019•19 min
"You begin by believing you can do it..." Mathieu Triay is the editor of Visions magazine, a literary science fiction title that publishes a wide range of stories; from super-short flash fiction written in collaboration with a computer author, through to a whole novel translated from French to English for the first time. Triay is a tinkerer, a creative technologist who has mixed his wide-ranging skills with his love for sci-fi to produce this unique magazine, and in this episode of the Stack pod...
Apr 19, 2019•37 min
"There is a weird, very British, eccentric attachment to hand dryers..." Wedgely Snipes (not his real name) is the editor of the South London Review of Hand Dryers. A lovely newsprint zine printed by Newspaper Club, it's simultaneously a fond parody of the London Review of Books, a silly excuse for writing about hand dryers, and a heartfelt experiment in creativity and collaboration. As you'll hear from our conversation, Wedgely genuinely loves hand dryers, but he's also obviously aware of the s...
Apr 12, 2019•22 min
"I don't know if we ever really thought we'd finish at eight issues..." Each issue of Weapons of Reason focuses on a major global challenge, like the environment, population growth or demographic shift, and brings some sense to these big, complex, difficult subjects by zooming in on a specific part of the wider challenge. Their latest issue is dedicated to technology, and they chose the rise of artificial intelligence as the area they wanted to explore, looking at the past, present and potential...
Apr 05, 2019•30 min
"They defied taboos, they attacked conventions... they caught a moment in time." Ian Birch is the author of Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers, an aural history of magazine cover design from 1958 to 2016. He spent his entire career in magazine publishing, working on the launches of titles including Grazia, Red, Heat and Closer, and in this conversation he draws on his decades of experience to chart the ways in which magazines have changed over the last 60 years. Beginning with One, the mag...
Mar 29, 2019•41 min
"Design cannot make a boring magazine interesting..." Audrey Fondecave is one of the editors of Too Much, the Japanese magazine that mixes art and architecture to create a poetic understanding of the spaces we inhabit. They call the resulting hybrid 'romantic geography', and each issue is exhaustively researched, drawing upon a wide pool of expert contributors to ensure that the ambitious editorial is as authoritative and provocative as possible. In this conversation, Audrey speaks about their p...
Mar 22, 2019•17 min
"I'm not going to kill your kids at night..." Valentina Egoavil Medina is the editor and creative director of Suspira, the magazine that views horror through a female lens. The first issue focused on monsters, seeking to understand what makes something monstrous; while the second issue was devoted to fetishism, exploring female sexual power in horror and beyond. In this conversation she speaks about the ideas behind the magazine, the twin frustrations that led her to making a magazine about horr...
Mar 16, 2019•22 min
"There are no bosses..." New Internationalist launched in 1973 to highlight the global inequalities that emerged as countries across the global south began to make their way in a post-colonial world. In the 1980s it adopted a non-hierarchical co-operative structure, and in 2017 it issued a community share offer, giving its readers the opportunity to buy a piece of the organisation. Buoyed by the success of its sale to its readers, last year the magazine embarked on the first major redesign in it...
Mar 08, 2019•30 min
"It's not entirely a surprise, but it's a delightful provocation..." Penny Martin is the editor of The Gentlewoman, the phenomenally successful magazine that fills its pages with fascinating women and discerning fashion, all presented with a wry smile that sets it apart from the rest of the newsstand. Renowned for its iconic covers that have featured a wide range of stars including Angela Lansbury, Beyoncé and Simone Biles, it rejects standard tools like cover lines and garish colours, instead u...
Mar 01, 2019•19 min
"It's Donald Trump and Vivienne Westwood in the same image..." Naoise O'Keeffe is editor-in-chief of Hot Potato, an "alternative newspaper" that uses fashion photography and simple one-page explainers to engage younger readers in big, difficult subjects like Brexit, gun control and the rise of Donald Trump. Printed at tabloid size by Newspaper Club, it looks at first glance like a fairly standard newsprint magazine, but O'Keeffe and her designer Maude Vervenne have introduced a little creative c...
Feb 22, 2019•22 min
"It's totally out of my comfort zone, but I'm 100% okay with that..." Steven Gregor is the editor and publisher of Gym Class, the magazine that has evolved over the last 10 years to become the magazine-maker's magazine. He published the last issue in 2016 as a fond farewell to print, explaining that he couldn't afford to keep on losing money on his passion project. But the start of 2019 saw the return of Gym Class, again taking magazines as its core subject matter, but with some major changes th...
Feb 15, 2019•27 min
"Let's just stay up until four in the morning..." Marc Holzenbecher is the publisher and executive editor of Still, the brilliantly eclectic arts and literary magazine based between Berlin and New York. In this conversation he speaks about the practical difficulties of working on a passion project with a team that is scattered across time zones, and about the thrill of producing something that's as close to perfect as it can be. We delivered this issue of Still to Stack subscribers in June last ...
Feb 08, 2019•25 min
"It feels like you can find everything on the internet, but that's just not true." Reagan Clare is the founder of Homesick magazine, the title that delves into archives to present previously unseen images and the stories of their creation. Going behind the scenes of the fashion, music, film and entertainment industries, each issue takes a tour of vintage pop culture from the 60s to the 90s, for a pre-internet exposé featuring fascinating characters you'd probably never otherwise have come across...
Feb 01, 2019•18 min
"Don't do everything yourself – that's mad..." Recorded live at The Book Club in London on Tuesday 22 January, this extra-long episode focuses on some of the most common challenges encountered when publishing an independent magazine. Divided loosely into four sections that focus on funding, commissioning, production and distribution, followed by an audience Q&A, we devote an hour and a half to understanding the first-hand experiences of independent magazine makers. Our expert panel features ...
Jan 25, 2019•1 hr 37 min
"We wanted to break something..." Dominika Hadelova and Aldo Buscalferri are the editors and creative directors of Matto, a new magazine based in Paris that combines art, photography, fashion and erotica. The artists, designers and other people featured in the magazine are united by their utter dedication to what they're doing, and Dominika and Aldo reflect that with a similarly obsessive commitment ('Matto' means 'crazy' in Italian). All independent magazines are inevitably personal reflections...
Jan 18, 2019•28 min
"It's like a little chameleon..." Suze Olbrich is the editor of Somesuch Stories, the literary magazine that covers a vast range of subjects including nature, sex, society and spirituality in its aim to reflect, "the full contemporary experience". It looks a lot like a paperback book, and in this conversation Suze speaks about the pleasure she gets from seeing it popping up in different places, alongside both books and magazines, quietly carrying its short stories and creative non-fiction to new...
Jan 11, 2019•22 min
"You don't need to be into video games. You just need to like pretty words and pictures..." Caspian Whistler is creative director and editor-in-chief of A Profound Waste of Time, the magazine that uses beautiful illustration and long first-person stories to reflect the experience of making and playing video games. The magazine sold out of its first print run, and has proven so popular that even after a second run it's difficult to get hold of copies. But it hasn't all been plain sailing. In this...
Jan 04, 2019•24 min
"The word 'finance' made me want to run a mile." Elana Schlenker and Mark Pernice are the art directors of Hacking Finance, a new magazine that takes a progressive and provocative look at business and our relation to money. This first issue is themed around 'movement', and features stories on a wide range of subjects, from the man trying to make a commercially viable hydrogen-powered car, through to the disruptive and creative impact that skateboarding can have on cities. For more information an...
Dec 21, 2018•22 min
"We approach special issues with trepidation..." John L Walters and Simon Esterson are the editor and art director of Eye magazine, the international review of graphic design. Their latest issue is the second in a two-part special focusing on magazine design, and it's their biggest issue ever, packed with fascinating interviews and comment covering both the mainstream and independent worlds (and the places where those two realms intersect). It's a massive undertaking, so it's not surprising that...
Dec 14, 2018•28 min
"My degree suffered a little..." Arne Meyer was one of the editors and art directors on the current issue of Brasilia, the magazine made by students at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. They won Student Magazine of the Year at the Stack Awards, so Arne dropped in at the Stack office the morning after the ceremony to speak about the making of the magazine, and the challenge of keeping quality high when the team has to change each year.
Dec 07, 2018•21 min
"Magazines tell the story of what's going on right now." Bobbie Johnson is the editor of Anxy, the California-based magazine that aims to break down the stigma around mental health. Anxy won Art Director of the Year and Best Use of Illustration at this year's Stack Awards, so the day after the ceremony Bobbie came over to the Stack office to talk about their evolving mission, and why a group of people based in Silicon Valley use a print magazine to communicate their ideas.
Nov 30, 2018•35 min
