Stack Magazines

Andrea Leung is one of the team behind Aww, the magazine that mixes animals and illustration to create a little bundle of happiness and creativity. Aww is published in Hong Kong, and I spoke to Andrea a few weeks ago, before the changes in the law and the increased Chinese government control, but in our conversation Andrea makes it clear that the magazine is intended as an escape from Hong Kong's politics, and from the many other difficulties people are currently facing around the world, and instead focuses on providing readers with some animal-based "illustration therapy".

"It has this ambiguous position of being geographically inside but ideologically outside..." Nina Vukelić and Rafaela Kaćunić are the founders and editors of This is Badland, the magazine that presents “The other Balkan”. The question of Balkan identity has been central to the entire project right from the start, but this fourth issue is themed “Are we home?” presented as a question that allows them to dive deep into ideas around nationalism, nostalgia, power and politics. But of course they do all that along with brilliantly bizarre photo shoots, playful, provocative stories and amazingly characterful and disruptive typography.

"We wear all the hats..." Feeeels is one of the most impressive new magazine launches I've seen so far this year. Made by a core team of four graphic designers who met on the graduate programme at Rhode Island School of Design, each issue is themed around a different tactile adjective, with contributors using the touchy, feely, human messiness of real stuff as inspiration for a fresh consideration of the world. In this episode Lauren Traugott-Campbell, Sarah Mohammadi, Angela Lorenzo and Drew Litowitz explain why they started by investigating the idea of 'fuzzy', what they learned from making that first issue, and why they've decided that issue two is going to be the 'slick' one.

"We keep going. We keep publishing. We keep speaking..." Maya Moumne and Hatem Imam are editors and creative directors of Safar, the visual culture magazine that’s based in Beirut, and which we delivered to Stack subscribers last month, May 2020. It’s a totally fascinating magazine, because while it begins from visual culture and design, it pushes out far beyond that to tackle big, difficult stories based in politics and social justice, with a particular focus on Lebanon and the wider Arab world. In this episode they speak about their motivations in making this magazine, and also about the particularly difficult conditions they’ve had to endure: the political upheaval that started with last year’s October Revolution, the economic disaster that has accompanied it, and of course the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to an extremely harsh lockdown across Lebanon.

"If you were running a successful magazine, why would you write about tripe or bins?" Eddy Rhead is one of the editors of The Modernist, the magazine we delivered to our subscribers last month, April 2020. Featuring a bin on the cover and including stories on bus shelters, concrete and the vagaries of 1950s planning permission, it makes for a decidedly strange read. But it's also beautiful and enlightening and unexpectedly idealistic: "There's a paucity of ambition in today's society," Eddy says. "There isn't that ambition to make the world a better place – modernism didn't always get it right, but that's what they were aiming for."

"At the moment it's more difficult to be daring..." Samira Ben Laloua is founder and publisher of Extra Extra, the erotic arts magazine that presents what it calls the “mundane and sensual city life”. The contemporary urban experience is right at the heart of this magazine, and coronavirus means that experience is more disrupted now than most people can remember, so I was interested to hear what they’re doing to adapt and cope with the restrictions.

"Journalism is in crisis and Europe is in crisis..." Kyrill Hartog is editor-in-chief of Are We Europe, the print magazine and digital platform that was launched in 2017 out of the chaos surrounding Brexit. It exists to tell stories about Europe in a non-divisive and constructive way, and since it’s a magazine that was born out of crisis, I wanted to speak with Kyrill to find out what they’re doing in the face of coronavirus, a new type of crisis that is affecting independent magazine makers around the world in totally new ways.

"You can have way more fun in print..." Ricarda Messner is one of the editors of Sofa, the Berlin-based magazine that dedicates itself to exploring themes like teenagers, cyber love, masculinity, and most recently play. We delivered their play issue to Stack subscribers this month, March 2020, and Ricarda dropped in at the Stack office a few weeks ago to speak about making "a print magazine that feels like the good old days of the internet."

"Somehow all our eclectic tastes combine and we get this glorious mess..." Dzenana Vucic is one of the volunteer editors behind The Lifted Brow, the literary magazine that styles itself as “a quarterly attack journal from Australia and the world”. Providing a platform for underrepresented voices, they do a great job of tapping talent that might otherwise be overlooked, uncovering experimental forms of literature and producing brilliantly exciting work. In this conversation she speaks about how the team make that happen, the pressures they face as a group of volunteers working without pay, and the many ways in which the Brow is growing beyond the magazine itself.

"We may not make it, but if we don't we'll go up in flames..." Jacob Barnes is editor-in-chief of Soft Punk, a new literary and arts magazine that’s working hard to tell stories you won’t come across elsewhere. Jacob and most of the team are navigating the move from university into work, and it seems like almost by accident they’ve found themselves creating this magazine as a way of showcasing the sort of stories they love. But there’s also something more deliberate and ambitious going on; they’re also committing themselves to a demanding quarterly publishing schedule, and engaging with the sort of serious work that can make a lasting impression on readers – at least it did for me.