Magazine design on stage
One of the most exciting things about independent magazines is the passion that flows through them – by and large, the people who publish their own small magazines aren’t doing it for profit, and I love it when their love and dedication are expressed in a way that jumps off the page. Of course that obsessive passion can show itself in many ways, and our event last month, on How to Design a Magazine, showcased two very different examples of it.
Objection magazine was created by Emmanuelle Goutal, an art director who works with brands including Estée Lauder and COS, and she used her talk to show how making her own magazine was the result of collaborating with lots of friends and colleagues to create a new way of speaking about design and interiors. She also noted that the magazine needs to fit into her life, and her talk for us was the last of her magazine jobs before she set her out of office and embarked on a totally different type of creative project, becoming a mum for the first time.
John Holt also spoke about the importance of bringing together the skills of other people to create LAW magazine, paying tribute to the work done by design studio All Purpose to create the layout and typefaces for issue 10. He also credited lots of friends and family, for doing things like taking photos of the backs of lorries, helping him create a pebbledash backdrop, or heading out with him to take LAW’s distinctive street-style photos. But he also went a step further, speaking about his brother’s death by suicide, his father’s sudden death, and his mum’s descent into Alzheimer’s. It was both incredibly moving and inspiring, and rare to see such a stark and fascinating view of one person’s creative and personal worlds.
I hope you’ll enjoy the video below, and if you want to see more magazine makers speaking about the things they do, come along to our next event on Tuesday 21st, when the people behind It’s Freezing in LA! and Where the Leaves Fall will be speaking about their work reporting on the climate crisis. As always, tickets cost £6, or they’re free to students (just email me from your university account and I’ll send the 100% discount code).
