Stack Magazines

Cathy Olmedillas began publishing her independent children's magazine 10 years ago, and in this conversation she reveals the process of evolution that saw it transform from a passion project into a sustainable business. As she admits, she has a "disease" for starting magazines, and she speaks about some of Anorak's successful siblings, as well as the ones you won't be seeing on a newsstand near you any time soon.

The latest issue of Printed Pages is out now, with Ted Parker's big pink grin beaming out from newsstands around the world. It's Nice That's magazine has built up a reputation for selling out in super-fast time, so I dropped into their office to speak to editor Owen Pritchard about wrangling content, commissioning top creative talent, and making a phenomenally popular piece of print.

Pylot is the analogue photography magazine that promises to never retouch its images for beauty. With the latest issue hitting shelves right now, editor Max Barnett and fashion director Patricia Villirillo stopped by to talk about why analogue is so important to them, what they've learned along the way, and why there's more to their magazine than meets the eye. (Also featuring a special guest appearance by a helicopter hovering above Somerset House.)

There are loads of really great music magazines out there, so how do you make one that stands out from the crowd? Liv Siddall's solution was to make a music magazine without commissioning a single music writer – instead she turns to the bands themselves and the staff at the Rough Trade record shops to create a totally unique title that's packed full of fun and idiosyncratic charm.

Cereal is the travel and style magazine renowned for its beautiful minimalism, and with the latest issue founders Rosa Park and Rich Stapleton have introduced their most substantial redesign to date. Editor-in-chief Rosa stopped in at the Stack office to speak about the sense of confidence that underpins the redesign, and the very many other projects currently coming out of the Cereal office.

Last week Giovanni Marchini Camia flew over to London to present Fireflies magazine as part of our Magazines at the Movies event. He's normally based in Berlin, so I took advantage of him being around to grab him for a quick podcast chat before the event started. He spoke about his arts-inspired movie magazine, creating a new vocabulary for speaking about film, and working remotely to make a magazine between Berlin and Melbourne.

Mixing witchcraft with feminism, Sabat magazine brings a fresh perspective to the occult. It has been brilliantly successful since it first launched a year ago, but the magazine was always conceived as a three-part project, and with the third issue out now, editor Elisabeth Krohn is calling an end to the print title. She came over to the office to speak about her reasons for making Sabat in the first place, and why now is the right time to stop.

This week we met up with Arman, Ganesha and Théodore from Eyesore to speak about their magazine dedicated to the changing face of the city. Starting as a student publication, Eyesore is now a project they and the rest of the team run outside their regular jobs, creating an alternative and artistic perspective on buildings, streets, places and spaces.

For the last 13 years, Peter Lundgren has been mixing magazines with t-shirts: each 'issue' of T-Post is a high quality, ethically produced t-shirt with a graphic on the front and a story printed inside. He runs his apparel publishing empire from Umea in northern Sweden, but we lured him down to speak at this year's EDCH conference in Munich, so I caught up with him there to record this podcast conversation and find out about how he reaches new customers, how marketing has changed over the last 13 years, and why ethical choices need to be visible.

This week we're off at the EDCH editorial design conference in Munich, where the first speaker was Peter Bil'ak from Works That Work. He spoke about his innovative design magazine that's not a design magazine, and also announced that he's going to stop publishing after issue 10. I wanted to find out more, so I grabbed him in a break, and we spoke about his aims in making the magazine, and why he's decided that the project can't go on forever.

This week's episode features bonafide magazine expert Jaap Biemans, better known as Coverjunkie. I dropped in at his home in Amsterdam and chatted with him about the phenomenon of Donald Trump as a cover star, and how the tone of Trump covers have changed now he has taken the presidency. Also, Instagram, Dutch politics, and why Jaap wishes he was really designing the news. It's a good one...

A fresh new redesign of frieze magazine hit newsstands yesterday (23 February, 2017) so I dropped into their office earlier this week to speak to the man behind the changes. David Lane is the co-founder and art director of The Gourmand magazine, and now he's bringing his expertise to bear on the contemporary arts title. In this episode he speaks about changing fonts, attention to detail, and a striking new direction for the cover of a venerable magazine.

Recorded live at Makerversity in Amsterdam on Monday 6 February 2017, this episode features a panel discussion with Kirsten Algera, editor of MacGuffin, Sim Kaart and Tom Janssen from Voortuin, and Marc Robbemond, buyer at Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum. There's a ton of great independent publishing coming out of Amsterdam at the moment, and during our discussion we try to figure out what's driving it, and what's going down particularly well with the city's readers.

This week we're speaking with Anja Aronowsky Cronberg, editor of Vestoj, a fashion magazine unlike any other. The latest issue is dedicated to 'masculinities', and she speaks about the fascinating history of beards, her dislike for fashion shoots, and her fondness for a pre-historic David Shrigley.

Recorded live at The Book Club in London on 24 January 2017, with Liv Siddall, editor of Rough Trade magazine, Jack Self, editor and founder of Real Review, and Steven Gregor, the man behind Gym Class magazine. Listen in and hear them speaking about why small magazines make more sense for them than a big, heavy, expensive luxury print product.

This week we're joined by Eddy, the founder, editor and art director of Water Journal, a photo-driven magazine that dedicates its pages to exploring water in all its forms. I love it when magazines plumb the depths of a niche, and as you'll hear this title is driven by Eddy's own personal obsession, as well as his desire to do things differently. Inspiring stuff for any aspiring independent publishers out there...

This week we paid a visit to Rabbits Road Press, the new community risograph print studio and publishing press based in Newham, East London. There we spoke to founders Sofia Niazi, Rose Nordin and Heiba Lamara about their aims for the press, and how it fits in with their feminist magazine OOMK.

We're back for our first proper podcast episode of 2017, chatting with Tom Armstrong, editor of London-based music magazine The Move. Hear him speaking about the transformative power of music, the excitement he feels when he gets to share something, and the fear that set in when his first copies of the new magazine arrived.

On our second podcast trip to New York we go back to Small City in Brooklyn for a panel discussion recorded in front of a live audience on 20 October 2016. We were joined by some of the city's most exciting independent food magazine makers, with Claudia Wu from Cherry Bombe, Walter Green from Lucky Peach and Michele Outland and Fiorella Valdesolo from Gather Journal speaking about what they do.

Recorded on 18 October 2016 in front of an audience at the School of Visual Arts in New York, this panel discussion features three of the city's most exciting independent publishers speaking about their magazines. Featuring Ben Yarling from American Chordata, Christopher Isenberg from Victory Journal and Sarah Forbes Keough from Put A Egg On It.