The STACK Blog
Monocle 24 on magazines
Thursday, December 15th, 2011
On Saturday I’ll be digging out my Rolex watch and Gucci loafers to take a trip down to the studios of Monocle 24. They’ve asked me on to talk about independent magazines with Tyler Brulee himself, so I’m currently assembling the list of titles that NEED to be discussed.
The show starts at 12 noon, with 15 minutes of magazine chat tucked somewhere between then and 1pm. At the moment I’ve got Boat, Delayed Gratification, Cagoule and Little White Lies. There should be room for one more if I talk fast enough – any suggestions?
Quick flick – Cagoule
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
If the people behind Britain’s best children’s magazine decided to make a magazine for grown-ups, what would it look like? Well for starters it would probably have a big pair of abstract breasts on the cover.
Cagoule is the new magazine from the makers of Anorak, and the influence of that title is clear to see. There are loads of great illustrations, like these by Matthew the Horse.
The strange nonsense poems (also by Matthew) are good too.
There are creative activities, like this invitation to draw characters. I’m sure they genuinely want me to scrawl over the pages, but when they only printed 1,000 copies that just feels a bit wrong.
And of course there are stories, including two really good, disturbing tales by designer Supermundane. Who knew he could write as well?
It’s whimsical, nonsensical, self-indulgent and absolutely brilliant. Cagoule could very easily have turned out as a weird, disjointed, even plain irritating magazine, but instead it has managed to construct a distinctive take on grown-up fun, and has given me two very enjoyable train journeys as a result.
On the back page editor Cathy explains that they made Cagoule because people asked for it. I’m very glad they did, and I really hope issue two follows soon. If you like the sound of all this, join them for their launch party tomorrow night (Wednesday 14th) at Beach London. See you there!
The results are in
Monday, December 12th, 2011Thanks very much to everyone who took part in the Stack survey. I’ve been dipping into it every now and then and it’s genuinely fascinating. Granted there probably aren’t many people who find it quite as riveting as I do, but no surprises there!
I’m downloading the responses now into what will form my Christmas holiday reading and we’ll be working in the New Year to make Stack even better. I can say ‘even better’ because so many of you were so kind about the service – it’s really lovely to get such positive feedback.
But first, I’m very pleased to announce the winners of the free subscriptions. As promised it’s in time for Christmas, so you can either give them to somebody else as a gift (we’ll send out a gift card and everything) or you can keep them for yourselves. The choice is yours.
Congratulations go to Warren Ali, Kev Darton and Vicky Kear. I’ll drop you all an email separately to work out what you want to do with your prizes.
Thanks again to everyone else, and rest assured that your comments will be used to shape the future of Stack. Very grand.
We have a winner
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
Here it is – Greek graphic designer Vetti Karvounari‘s Christmas tree made from a pile of magazines has emerged as a deserving winner of the first Stack Christmas Card Competition.
She won with 133 votes, followed in second place by Laura Callaghan‘s pun-packed cover for Noel magazine, and Clarissa San Pedro‘s stylised Rudolph in third place. Thanks again to everyone who submitted fantastic work, and of course congratulations to Vetti – she wins £250, while Laura and Clarissa both win a year’s subscription to Stack.
We’ll be sending the card off to print today so that it can be sent out to all subscribers in the December mail out, which is due to leave us in the middle of next week. Watch out for it arriving soon, with another bumper magazine delivery.
The Stack Christmas card – you choose
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011Thanks very much to everyone who entered the Stack Christmas card competition – we had some fantastic entries and the time has come to pick a winner. We’ve narrowed it down to the final five but opinion is split in the Stack office over who should pocket the £250, so we’ve decided to put it to the vote.
Take a look at the cards below, then go to the Stack Facebook page to vote for your favourite. The competition will remain open until 10am tomorrow morning (30 November), at which point we’ll close the polls and announce the winner here on the blog. The winning card will then be sent to print, in time for our December mail out next week.
Good luck to all the finalists – may the best card win!
Clarissa San Pedro – Rudolph Reading
Heidi Ball – Festive Puffin
Laura Callaghan – Noel Magazine
Two In Tandem – Paper Santa
Vetti Karvounari – Magazine Tree
Quick flick – Uppercase
Saturday, November 26th, 2011
Look at this little guy! He was made to be on the cover of a magazine! Dapper pooch Lincoln, shot by animal photographer Christine Edwards, is celebrating the tenth issue of Uppercase, a quarterly craft, fashion and design journal. Published in Canada, the magazine celebrates inspiring creative figures and discusses temporal design trends. Think Creative Review’s kooky Canadian cousin.
Issue 10 explores a couple of apparently unrelated themes. There are pets, and lots of them (hence Lincoln). They’ve been photographed, illustrated, even rendered in plush 3D – Sian Keegan crafts cuddly versions of people’s pets from her Brooklyn apartment.
But there’s also a theme of truth and fiction, and several articles explore the way that creative ventures can blur the line between the two. For example, this lovely typographic spread brings together some of the world’s most famous made up places.
And then there’s a piece inspired by Art Spiegelman’s Maus, showcasing books that are classed as neither fact nor fiction.
Uppercase is a delightful magazine, with fun miscellany and quirky tidbits blended among intelligent longform writing and photography-led pieces. Issue 11 is out now and issue 12 will be with us in January.
The first ever Stack survey
Friday, November 25th, 2011Stack is three years old this month and it feels like a good time to stop, pause for breath and work out what we could be doing better.
I wouldn’t say that we have no idea of what people think to Stack – Printout is a great place to meet subscribers, and people are always getting in touch via Twitter and Facebook. But we’ve never set our stall out to survey subscribers before, and that seems like the best way to really understand how we’re doing.
So if you’re a current Stack subscriber and you’d like to let us know what you think about the service, please fill in our survey. We’ve kept it really short so it shouldn’t take you more than two minutes, and of course all information provided will be kept strictly confidential and your details will not be shared with anyone else.
You can choose whether or not you want to leave your email address, but on 12 December we’ll choose three email addresses at random to receive a year’s free subscription to Stack. Winners can choose to either give the subscription as a Christmas gift to somebody else, or add it onto their existing subscription.
Thanks in advance for your help with this – we’re really looking forward to hearing what you think!
Three new titles join Stack
Thursday, November 17th, 2011
Typical isn’t it? You wait ages for a new magazine and then three turn up at once.
Over the last couple of days we’ve added the brilliant Romanian magazine DoR, fashion journal Address and surf/skate/snow title Huck. It looks like they’ve decided to celebrate joining Stack by all putting out monochrome covers this issue, but aside from the colour scheme they’re three very different magazines.
DoR is the English language version of Decât o Revistă, and is really quite special. When they first sent me a copy last year I didn’t hold out great hopes for it, but it’s a fantastic read – really inventive and playful, and absolutely fascinating. If you’re anything like me you’re probably not all that into the ins and outs of modern Romanian life, but DoR is a reminder that sometimes it doesn’t matter what a good story is about – a good story, well told, is just a good story. I’m really looking forward to sending it out and hearing the response it gets.
Address is a brand new fashion magazine – the first issue came out just a couple of months ago – and it’s doing something totally different. Taking an almost intellectual approach to fashion, it asks us to think again about the clothes we wear and what they mean to us. Its editor Johannes Reponen says he was inspired by Fire & Knives, and you can see the similarity – Address delves deep into its subject, exploring fashion in the same way that Fire & Knives loses itself in the lesser appreciated corners of the kitchen.
And finally there’s Huck. I run Stack out of the offices of Huck’s publisher The Church of London, and we’ve been trying to add the magazine to the Stack line-up for ages. The cover declares that it’s about surf, skate and snow, but also music, art and activism, a clear statement that this is a magazine with ambitions beyond sport. It’s as happy profiling a big-wave surfer as it is interviewing Ai Weiwei, and its mix of political awareness, counter-cultural cool and beautiful photography makes for a fantastic read.
