Stack Magazines

"There's still a desire for long-form photo essays." Francesca Sears is Director of Special Projects at Magnum Photos, and in this episode she explains why the legendary picture agency decided to publish its first ever newspaper. Drawing upon the Magnum archives, A Brief Visual History in the Time of Isis takes a long view of history to tell a fresh story about how the group has managed to draw so much attention to itself, and challenges the image that Isis has so carefully created.

"The only thing for sale in this magazine is our ideas." Everyone knows that food magazines are supposed to be full of delicious recipes and gorgeous photography of dishes that you can either buy or make for yourself in your fantastically successful life. But Mold takes a different approach – instead of promoting aspirational images, it questions why we eat the things we do, and how that might need to change if we're going to meet the demands of feeding a rapidly expanding global population. In this episode, editor and founder LinYee Yuan explains the thinking behind her exciting, provocative magazine, and considers what the future may hold for Mold.

"Everyone has an opinion on this..." Exploring conflict and visual culture, Contra Journal wants readers to think again about the images they see everyday on the news and elsewhere. Very few people would consider themselves an expert on the subject, but almost everyone has strong feelings about it, and in this episode three of the editors discuss the ideas and motivations behind the magazine, and explain why the slowness of print is so important to the project.

"We like to go beyond the landscapes we visit." Cartography is a beautiful, photo-led travel magazine that documents not only the people and places it encounters, but also their unseen histories and "holiness". In this conversation, editor and creative director Paula Corini explains the ideas and motivation behind their uniquely spiritual approach to travel journalism.

"The process comes first and the results later." Flaneur magazine is the experimental, reflexive magazine that builds each issue around a single street. The strapline has always been 'Fragments of a street', but for the latest issue, based around Treze de Maio in São Paulo, they've intensified the fragmentation and broken their stories up into numbered chunks that flow through the pages. It's their most ambitious issue to date, and in this episode editors Grashina Gabelmann and Fabian Saul explain how they and the rest of the team made it happen.

"You come for a week and you never leave..." Slightly Foxed is the literary magazine that launched 15 years ago when three friends decided to take a stand against chain bookshops and celebrity publishing. As the magazine grew the team expanded, and in this episode they tell the story of how they became an extended family of book lovers, and why everything comes back to keeping their readers happy.

"Making a magazine is the best way to get to know a country." Froh! is a magazine and media NGO based in Cologne, and they've built a reputation for telling fascinating, unexpected stories from places like Armenia, Moldova and Lithuania. Their latest project is a book called Tbilisi – Archive of Transition, launching now on Kickstarter and based on three years spent working with locals and archives in Georgia's capital. In this episode, three of the team explain why they're drawn to these places, and why the rest of Europe could learn from them.

"I just can't think of anyone else who could do this job better than I could!" Andrew Diprose is group creative director of Wired in the UK, and in this conversation he reflects upon a career that has seen him working on iconic titles including i-D, Smash Hits and GQ, and for the last nine years Wired. He's a genuine magazine fan, and while the print publishing world has changed around him, he remains committed to the high standards that help his award-winning work to stand out from the crowd.

"Let's just make a poetry magazine – how hard can that be?" Megan Conery and Molly Taylor launched their poetry magazine hotdog in 2015, and quickly found out just how hard it could be. We delivered the third issue of hotdog to Stack subscribers last month, so Megan came over to the office to share some of the things they've learned along the way, and to talk about what drives them to keep on making the magazine bigger and better each time.

"Magazines can be more than just pieces of paper." The Party Next Door is an attempt to push beyond the established definition of what constitutes a magazine. Presented as a 12-inch vinyl record in a screenprinted sleeve, with gatefold outer sleeve, it looks to all intents and purposes like a standard record, but it's presented as issue one and its creators intend it to be a publication. Co-founder Andrew Foxall stopped in at the Stack office to give us the background to this ambitious publishing project.

"The one thing I knew is I didn't want to be an editor." Liz Schaffer is the editor of Lodestars Anthology, the travel magazine that trades in escapist tales from some of the world's most beautiful destinations. In this episode she speaks about why she never wanted to edit her own magazine, how she ended up being won over, and what are some of the unexpected benefits that have come along the way.

"People think letterpress is supposed to look knackered... We don't do that." Nick Loaring and Pat Randle are the editors, designers, publishers and printers of Double Dagger, the big, beautiful, letterpress journal that we delivered to Stack subscribers in October last year. They stopped in at the Stack offices this week to speak about their love of ink, the evils of photopolymer plates, and the simple beauty of moving type around to create a true letterpress layout.

Independent magazines with a social or ideological mission are hugely popular at the moment, but can they really affect change in the world? Recorded live at The Book Club in London on 30 January 2018, this panel discussion brings together a group of the people behind those independent magazines, speaking about the challenges and opportunities they face. Featuring: James Cartwright, editor of Weapons of Reason; Rob Orchard, editor of Delayed Gratification; Sean Dagan Wood, editor of Positive News; Samira Shackle, editor of New Humanist; and Justinien Tribillon, editor of Migrant Journal.

"It started out of a need – there was no place for magazines in Berlin." Mark Kiessling and Jessica Reitz opened their magazine shop Do You Read Me?! in Berlin in 2008, and over the last 10 years they have become renowned for their discerning collection of quality print. In this episode Mark reflects on a decade of selling the best magazines, including the changes they've seen during that time and the massive increase in the number of independent magazines around the world.

"To see your little magazine poking out on the shelves is an amazing feeling." James Roberts and his friend Hugo Ross launched Vanguards magazine together while the two of them were studying Fine Art at Edinburgh University. With their studies behind them, the pair collaborated with 12-B, a design and risograph studio in London, to produce the second issue of their magazine exploring Scottish design and brands. In this episode, recorded at the end of 2017 just after the second issue had launched, James speaks about his excitement at seeing his magazine out in the real world, and why the pair plan to move beyond Scotland's borders in future issues.

"I have an urge to make things that stay in the world." James Guerin is the founder, publisher and editor-in-chief of Berlin Quarterly, the literary and arts magazine that considers the cultural world as seen from Germany's capital. In this episode he reveals his motivations for making the magazine, the vintage magazines that still inspire him and his own desire to leave a lasting impression in print.

"How can you change without changing?" Marco Velardi is editor-in-chief of Apartamento, the iconic interiors magazine that is currently celebrating its 20th issue and 10th anniversary. We met up in Berlin to speak about the enduring pressures of independent publishing, the things they've learned along the way, and the challenge of keeping a magazine fresh while remaining familiar.

"It was three of us in a white van." Thomas Sumner is the creative director of The Essential Journal, the men's fashion and lifestyle title based in Liverpool. Now distributing 50,000 copies every month across Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and London, and working with high end advertisers like Rolex and Jaguar, he reflects on the title's rapid growth, its editorial ethos and the opportunities that lay ahead.

"I'm always waiting for the surprise." Christoph Amend is the editor-in-chief of Germany's Zeit Magazin, the magazine distributed with news weekly Die Zeit. In this conversation he speaks about his earliest experience of writing articles, how his first professional magazine jobs taught him that creativity and profitability must go hand in hand, and why it's important for him as an editor to keep on writing.

Hear all the judges' comments and winners' acceptance speeches from this year's Stack Awards, recorded live at The Queen of Hoxton on Monday 20 November 2017.