Stack Magazines

"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...

"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,...

"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. I...

"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 s...

"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 hea...

"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 ar...

"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 t...

"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 editoria...

"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 abo...

"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 s...

"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...

"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...

"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 re...

"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 a...

"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...

"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 und...

"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 commitme...

"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, al...

"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 af...

"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...

"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 t...

"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...

"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 pe...

Recorded live at The Queen of Hoxton in London on Monday 19 November, this week's episode features all the winners and commended magazines from the Stack Awards 2018. Hear our judges sharing their thoughts on the stand out titles, hear the winners giving their heartfelt acceptance speeches, and hear our little microphone breaking down whenever we play our walk-on music. See lots of pictures from t...

"It just became this thing we couldn't shake..." Perrin Drumm is the founder and director of Eye on Design, the initiative launched by AIGA in 2014 as a way to reach designers in the college to mid-career age bracket. Originally a blog that Perrin ran on her own as a side project, it quickly grew into a fully fledged website, and then in 2017 came the first full issue of the Eye on Design print ma...