Pentagram partner Astrid Stavro is an award-winning graphic designer with an international reputation for concept-driven design, applied with exquisite typographic sensibility and attention to craft. Her work encompasses brand identities, editorial and exhibition design, wayfinding systems and packaging for clients such as Camper, McKinsey, Cahiers du Cinéma, Phaidon, Barcelona Design Museum, Laurence King, PORT magazine, The National Portrait Gallery, Fedrigoni and Wallpaper*. Between 2013 to 2017, Stavro led the celebrated redesign of the London-based arts and culture magazine Elephant, where she was art director and contributing editor. She is a visiting lecturer at The Royal College of Art and a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

Will Hudson is founder of It’s Nice That and innovation director across the HudsonBec Group – a group of companies that exist to enable creativity to thrive. Founded by Will Hudson and Alex Bec, the group provides a framework for a series of small, beautifully structured companies that share a purpose, a set of values, a studio space and above all a belief in the power of creativity. Companies within the group currently include media company It’s Nice That, creative agency Anyways, online resource Lecture in Progress and creative recruitment platform If You Could Jobs.

Jeremy Leslie runs magCulture, dividing his time between designing, consulting and writing. He’s a passionate advocate for editorial design, has written several books about the subject, and the magCulture online Journal is a key source of magazine news and opinion. He curates the annual ModMag conferences in London and New York and oversees the magCulture shop, home of the monthly magCulture Meets evenings. In 2018 he was awarded the BSME’s Mark Boxer Award for an outstanding contribution to magazines in the UK.

Debbie Millman is a designer, author, educator and brand strategist. She is host of the award-winning podcast Design Matters, the world’s first podcast on design. She is also chair of the world’s first Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts, and the author of six books on design and branding.

Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator. He is chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group and the former director of the ICA. He has previously been the editor of magazines including Arena and Tank and his writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Observer, Granta, Aperture and Wired. He is the author of Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated for the Orwell Prize for political writing.

Adam Moss was editor-in-chief of New York Magazine from 2004 to 2019. During his 15-year tenure he oversaw an ambitious digital expansion in his role as editor-in-chief of parent company New York Media, with the magazine and digital properties widely recognized for editorial excellence. Under Moss’s leadership New York and nymag.com won 41 National Magazine Awards, more than any other magazine over this time period, including Magazine of the Year. New York’s groundbreaking journalistic event “Cosby: The Women” won the 2015 George Polk Award for magazine reporting, and in 2018 the magazine won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College, his alma mater, and is a member of the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame.

Gail Bichler is the design director of The New York Times Magazine where she and her team have won numerous awards for their print and interactive design. In 2019 they were named Design Team of the Year by the Art Directors Club, and Brand of the Year by the Society of Publication Designers. In addition, Gail’s work has been recognised by national and international design organisations including D&AD, the American Institute for Graphic Arts, the Type Directors Club and Creative Review.

The former art director of the New York Times Book Review, Steven is the current co-chair of SVA’s MFA Design: Designer as Entrepreneur programme. He is the author of over 180 books, including Merz to Emigre and Beyond: Avant Garde Magazine Design of the 20th Century and 100 Classic Graphic Design Magazines (with Jason Godfrey), Graphic Design Rants and Raves, and most recently THE MODERNS: Midcentury American Modern Graphic Design (with Greg D’Onofrio). He is the recipient of the 2011 Smithsonian National Design Award.

Jaap Biemans is the man behind coverjunkie.com, championing ace cover designs and their designers. He is art director of Volkskrant Magazine and his work has been recognised by D&AD, SPD, ADCN, Mercur and Prix de Couvre. He is also proud to have designed a set of postage stamps for PostNL.

Simon Armstrong is the book buyer for Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Tate Liverpool, and has been putting books and magazines on art, design and visual culture into people’s hands and heads for 20 years. Simon was previously the Head of Retail at the Design Museum in London and store manager at Magma Manchester. Simon also writes books on art and architecture. His latest book, Street Art (Art Essentials Series) is published by Thames & Hudson in September 2019.

Steve Fine is currently the picture and sports editor at Flipboard, an app that has over 145 million monthly readers in 22 countries. He curates daily photo galleries around the world’s biggest events and creates interesting long-form packages on themes and issues in the sports world. In addition to leading the social strategy for major sporting events, including notifications, he maintains a magazine called The Shot, Flipboard’s destination for photography. Prior to joining the Silicon Valley startup five years ago, Steve was the Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated for 17 years, leading a 25-member team of staff photographers and editors. Before that he was deputy picture editor at The New York Times Sunday Magazine and sports picture editor at the paper.

Clare Grafik is head of exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. She has worked for public institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Hayward Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. At the Photographers’ Gallery she has collaborated with artists and photographers including Lise Sarfati, Isa Genzken and Larry Sultan/Mike Mandel, and her last group exhibition was Double Take: Photography & Drawing (2016). She curated a Bettina Von Zwehl solo exhibition at The Freud Museum, London, (2016), and forthcoming projects include an exhibition on children’s photobooks.

Suzanne is the commissioning editor of WeTransfer’s content site WePresent, which currently has two million monthly readers, where she curates five billion pages of art, photography, music and more to WeTransfer users. She also publishes newly commissioned works from the likes of Björk, Edel Rodriguez and Gorillaz. She joined WeTransfer in 2014 and has played a crucial part in shaping WeTransfer’s creative community. Suzanne also leads on diversity for WeTransfer’s content team, ensuring that as many different voices as possible are supported through the WeTransfer platforms

Marc Robbemond is a core member of Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum, the renowned newsstand that was established in Amsterdam in 1969. Working at the store since 2011, he specialises in the discovery, import and circulation of independent magazines and zines from across the globe. Fascinated by the stories behind independent publishing, Marc has also been the initiator of many of Athenaeum’s events with indie magazine makers.

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She’s the author of To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring, and The Lonely City, which has been translated into 15 languages. In 2018 she was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Her latest book is Crudo, a real-time novel about the turbulent summer of 2017. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Mike Dang is the editor-in-chief of Longreads, which is dedicated to sharing and publishing the best storytelling in the world. Under his tenure, Longreads stories have been included in several nonfiction editions of The Best American anthology series, nominated for three National Magazine Awards, and won a Peabody Futures of Media Award for Digital Journalism.

Ailah Ahmed is editorial director of two imprints: Little, Brown and Virago Press. She publishes critically acclaimed novelists Andrew Sean Greer (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Less) and Chigozie Obioma (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize with The Fishermen). Her non-fiction list ranges from activist titles such as Trans Like Me by CN Lester and Can We All Be Feminists? by June-Eric Udorie, to Hormonal by Eleanor Morgan and How to Start a Revolution by Lauren Duca. Over 10 years in publishing, Ailah has held positions at Simon and Schuster, Canongate Books and Tindal Street Press.

Sian Cain is the books news editor at the Guardian, steering the newspaper’s coverage of literature and authors around the world. Working from the London office, Sian has previously worked at the ABC in Australia and CNN in the UK, and spent five years working as a bookseller.

The London-based freelance art director and editorial designer has worked at the Guardian and Observer newspapers, WIRED, Esquire, Newsweek, and Mr Porter. Steven is also the editor of Gym Class, a bi-annual printed magazine about magazines and the people who make them.

Liv Siddall is Story Editor at WeTransfer, Deputy Editor of Riposte Magazine, Music Editor of Twin Magazine and a contributor to magazines such as The Observer, ELLE, Monocle and many more. She was the founder and editor of Rough Trade Magazine and was the co-host of the MagCulture Podcast and host of MagCulture Live. She is also a podcast producer and has her own show called Redundancy Radio.