Stack Magazines

Recorded live at our Independent Magazine Fair on Saturday 14th May 2022, this panel discussion features advice from the unconventional magazine makers behind Real Review, A Profound Waste of Time and Paperboy.

Recorded at our Independent Magazine Fair, this panel discussion features expert advice from the people behind Delayed Gratification, Season Zine, and The Modernist.

Martha Dillon is editor of It’s Freezing in LA!, the magazine about climate change that recently published its eighth issue, themed around ‘Borders’. I spoke to her a couple of weeks after COP26 came to an end and I was interested to hear her thoughts on the conference, as well as the wider climate change conversation and how greater interest in the subject is allowing them to be more ambitious in what they’re doing.

"We miss having a tactile experience..." Platon Poulas is one of the people behind Dead Slow, a strange new magazine concept that we have in the Stack shop at the moment. He and his co-founder Anunaya Rajhans describe themselves as producers rather than editors, and that reflects the unusual format of the magazine, which is presented as a vinyl record, complete with a cardboard sleeve and sides A and B. In this conversation he explains the idea behind the vinyl references, and also his and Anunaya's desire to create a piece of printed ephemera that celebrates other forms of physical media.

"The world suddenly feels bigger again..." Nelson Ng is founder, editor and art director of Lost, a travel magazine based in Shanghai and published in both English and Mandarin. Of course the pandemic has made international travel much more problematic than it used to be, and that will inevitably have consequences for anyone making a travel magazine, but as you’ll hear Nelson is pretty philosophical about the situation, and he speaks about how he thinks travel feels different these days, while also acknowledging that he expects it will be significantly harder to make his next issue.

"We've always loved analogue. We produce records, we make books, we do physical shows – it's part of who we are..." Sean Bidder is editor of Fact, the music and visual art magazine that was relaunched last year as a big, glossy, biannual publication. I spoke to Sean and Zak Kyes, founder of Zak Group and art director of the relaunch, to find out what brought Fact back to print, and how it fits in with the broader activities of publisher The Vinyl Factory.

"A book is different to a magazine – you've got more space. You can take more time..." Rob Orchard is one of the founders and editors of Delayed Gratification magazine, and now one of the authors of An Answer for Everything, their hardback book published by Bloomsbury. Infographics have always been a big part of what Delayed Gratification does, and the book really leans into that, with 200 ridiculously detailed, meticulously researched infographics set over 300-odd pages. In this conversation Rob explains how it was the uncertainty and disruption of the pandemic that finally took the book from being a loose set of ideas and turned it into a real actual thing you can go and buy in the shops, and also how the process of making the book alongside the magazine is the hardest thing they’ve ever done.

"A lot more love and care goes into it because it's in print..." Tom Preece is one of the founding editors of Yuck, the Manchester-based music magazine that released its fifth issue this summer. Publishing a music magazine is tough when nobody is allowed to go out and listen to live music, but now life is opening up more here in the UK and I was excited to hear how that’s changing the scope of what Yuck can do, including planning for their first live event next month, and increasing the size and ambition of the magazine itself.

"I'm finally at a point in my life where I'm proud of my identity as disabled..." Olivia Spring is founder and editor of Sick, the magazine made by chronically ill and disabled people. In this conversation Olivia speaks about her own illness, why she decided to start the magazine in the first place, and how she’s using it as a way to challenge some of the ableist prejudices she faces day to day.

"I just really needed a sense of freedom..." Zena Alkayat is editor and publisher of Bloom, the gardening magazine she started when she moved into a new flat and suddenly became somebody who had a garden for the first time. Unable to find gardening books or magazines aimed at her, she decided to go ahead and publish one herself. In this conversation she talks about how the magazine has evolved over 10 issues, the difficulties of independent publishing and also the opportunities it has opened up for her.

"Running a Kickstarter is a very overwhelming thing..." Caspian Whistler is creative director and editor-in-chief of A Profound Waste of Time, the beautiful illustrated magazine that’s inspired by video games. He’s one of the independent publishers who has successfully funded his magazine through Kickstarter, and he has a campaign live at the moment to reprint issues one and two, which is currently sitting at just under £80,000 pledged with 22 days left to go. In this conversation he speaks about the stresses and strains of running a Kickstarter, independent publishing, and generally getting by in the pandemic.

"We can talk about football as our very own way to experience the world..." Matteo Cossu is editor and co-founder of Uno-Due, the annual magazine about football and culture that he started with some footballing friends in 2014. The first two issues of the magazine were published in Italian but for the third issue they switched to English and produced a beautiful 250-odd page hardback tome with fascinating stories from all around the world. In this conversation he explains how the magazine first came about and why everything they do with Uno-Due stems from their original desire to tell footballing stories that reflect their experience of the game.

"We wanted people to lose themselves in words..." Marius Sosnowski is deputy editor of Dispatches, a large-format magazine of ideas published out of Berkeley in California, and inspired by that city’s intellectual and counter-cultural heritage. As he explains in this conversation, Dispatches was always intended as a big publication, and they make the most of those oversized pages by packing them with text – this is definitely a magazine that needs to be read.

"The whole magazine itself becomes a piece of art..." Aaron Beebe is the founder and art director of Plastikcomb, a magazine that champions collage, comics, fine art and more, all of it unified by a low brow pop aesthetic. There’s something raw and rough and experimental about Plastikcomb – its pages break out of the orderly grids of contemporary magazine design and instead respond to the featured artwork to create something that is itself a piece of art, and in this conversation Aaron speaks about his influences and the series of happy accidents that led him to this point.

"I don't think we've made the perfect Bum yet..." Lee Marable and Roosa Melentjeff are the editors and designers of Bum, a lovely risograph printed magazine based in Helsinki and dedicated to exploring stories around arts, architecture and design. As they explain in this conversation, the magazine really started because they wanted to experiment with risograph printing, and I think it’s clear they’ve totally fallen in love with this unpredictable and painstaking method of printing.

"We put the artist as a human before the work..." Audrey Rose Smith and Vicente Muñoz are the editor and creative director of Balcony, the new magazine that explores art in the everyday. Both Audrey and Vicente work in New York in jobs connected with the art world, and Balcony is the result of their frustration with the way art is commonly discussed – they want to present this intimate, behind-the-scenes view of artists as a way of challenging the commercial, event-driven narrative that tends to dictate which artists are covered in the mainstream press.

"I hope it makes people feel good..." Harriet Fitch Little is editor of Kinfolk magazine and editor-in-chief of Kindling, the new title published by Kinfolk to explore the subject of bringing up children. In this conversation she explains how the Kinfolk team ended up making a magazine about raising kids, how the pandemic played its part, and why it was particularly important that Kindling remained an open and non-judgemental magazine.

"American football is a reflection of America – good and bad..." Shawn Ghassemitari is editor-in-chief and creative director of Spiral, the magazine that takes a creative look at American football. I was really interested to hear about his reasons for making the magazine – his parents immigrated to the US from Iran in 1978 and he speaks about the sport as a way of assimilating into American culture, and also as a way of reflecting all elements of that culture, both good and bad.

"Things are going to be weird for the rest of our lives..." Peter McCain is the creative director and editor-in-chief of Batshit Times, the New York-based satire and arts magazine that released its first issue in April last year. That first issue was themed ‘Quarantine’, and when I read it I assumed the whole project was conceived in response to the pandemic, but as he explains in this conversation, there are lots of other things he’s much more worried about.

"We just wanted to know – what do people care about now?" Lea Kloepel is editor of Synchron, the magazine she launched earlier this year with her boyfriend and art director Johannes Farfsing, and which stands out as one of the strangest and most striking magazine launches I’ve seen for a long time. It's dedicated to exploring contemporary visual art and fiction, but it does so in a way that is brilliantly inventive and entirely its own – Lea's explanation of the origins of their weirdly organic typography is one of my all-time favourite examples of geeky magazine design obsession!