Behind the scenes: Article magazine

After three years of publishing his biannual men’s fashion magazine, creative director Kenny Ho has decided it’s time to get serious about the business side of running Article magazine.

With the new issue just out, I caught up with Kenny to talk about how the magazine has evolved since the start, and what he’s doing to develop it further.

The new issue has been given a bit of an overhaul – what are the changes and why did you make them?
When we started Article three years ago, everything we did was very intuitive and we’d primarily make choices based on what we thought looked best. As we have grown, we have realised that standards are there for a reason, so we decided to move the masthead to the top section of the front cover and to add some cover lines to give readers an indication of what’s inside. It’s all part of increasing our discoverability and making Article more accessible to the reader.

The decisions were also made with potential advertisers in mind. We’ve found that it’s harder for advertisers to imagine how an ad will look and work on the page if the magazine deviates from the standards. It’s been a really interesting process; we’ve learned a lot about the business side of things, and how to merge that with our readers’ preferences.

In this issue you’ve collaborated with the Barbican and Martin Parr in conjunction with his current show, Strange and Familiar. How did that come about?
Ever since out first issue I’ve wanted to work with Martin Parr, but he’s such a busy man. But for this issue the timing was perfect for his show at the Barbican. I approached him and he got really interested, so in addition to an interview where he talks about his experience curating the show, we got him involved in the Circular Project – a regular feature where we collaborate with artists on the theme of circles. We got full access to his archives and even got to print a big poster with him.

Were you ever concerned about how it would go down with your readers? That it’s less refined than what they’re used to seeing in Article?
Not really. I think we’ve always been quite eccentric in the way we do things, so that unpredictability kind of works; our readers seem to like the fact that we’re full of surprises.

Two new people have recently joined your team – what are their areas of expertise?
Up until now, we haven’t had the the chance to really focus on the business side of running a magazine, but I think it’s time to take that step. They’re both very business-minded so they’re helping us structure the business and optimising costs while maintaining – if not maximising – the quality of our product. It’s really refreshing to have them onboard to help us see possibilities moving forward that go beyond the print medium.

It sounds like it’s all change – how has Article evolved over the three years you’ve been publishing it?
There’s been a lot of trial and error, but for each issue Article has become more refined. When we started we were lucky enough to have a paper sponsor onboard, so we were really spoiled in that we could pick our papers from the top shelves. Looking back, as the content of each issue is so varied, I think we have benefited from stripping the production back a bit, to keep the reader’s attention on the page.

Content-wise, I’m constantly trying to look beyond what’s already there. It’s important to me that we feature more than fashion, so we always include some art, and we’re looking to expand that scope to include other aspects of culture, like music and food, while maintaining our focus on Britishness, of course.

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