Podcast: Thomas Sumner, The Essential Journal

Most of the magazines we work with on Stack define themselves against the mainstream – they look to the big, glossy titles with their celebrity covers and set out to do something different. But The Essential Journal prefers a different approach – this free magazine published in Liverpool draws its inspiration from the big, aspirational men’s magazines and takes them on at their own game.

It now distributes 50,000 copies across Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and London every month, and creative director Thomas Sumner stopped in at the Stack offices earlier this week to speak about the challenge of making an independent magazine that aims for such mainstream appeal.

Listen to the podcast below to hear him speaking about the role celebrity plays in the magazine, why they’ll never put women in bikinis on the cover, and what they gained by starting out in Liverpool. And if you’d like to hear more conversations with magazine makers, check our Soundcloud or iTunes pages for lots more interviews, and follow us while you’re there so we can deliver next week’s episode straight to you as soon as it’s ready.