Stack Magazines

"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.