Branding for independent magazines

If you’re a regular listener to our podcast you might know that we added video earlier this year, but for this episode I’m switching back to audio-only, to bring you a recording of the Indie Publisher Summer Forum, which was held at the Athenaeum magazine shop in Amsterdam on Thursday 7th August 2025. It was a great day of independent publishing conversations, organised by Marc Robbemond at Athenaeum, along with James Laffar from distributors Ra & Olly, and Nikki Simpson from the International Magazine Centre, bringing people together from across Europe to talk about making independent magazines.

It all kicked off with Marc giving a presentation on the history of the shop; Jeremy Leslie from Magculture gave a talk based on the At Work With interviews that he publishes on his blog; and there was a programme of expert talks throughout the afternoon. But the bit you’ll hear is a panel discussion that I chaired on the evening, with Damian Bradfield from WeTransfer and Fupe, Megan Wray Schertler from In Real Life Media, and Peter Kormanyos from Purgatory Sandwich.

Marc Robbemond, Athenaeum

Jeremy Leslie, Magculture

James Laffar, Ra & Olly

The whole event was focused on the practicalities of independent publishing, and our conversation zoomed in on the subject of branding for independent magazines. That’s not something you often hear independent publishers speaking about, so I was really interested to hear their thoughts, with all three of them drawing on their wider experiences in the corporate world as well as their smaller, independent projects.

The panel was held above the shop in a lovely, sunny room, and all the windows were open so you’ll hear the trams and the people going past outside, and I hope it gives a sense of the evening’s atmosphere. We took questions from the audience at the end and some of those are a bit hard to hear, but the answers are all totally audible, and they’re really interesting too, so stick with it for that, and I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation recorded at the Indie Publisher Summer Forum in August 2025.

Our podcast archive contains hundreds of conversations with independent magazine makers, so if you like this, take a scroll through and you’ll find lots more publishing advice. And if you want to stay up to date with our latest releases, follow us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and we’ll be able to deliver our new episodes to you as soon as they’re ready.

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Photography by Manon Dijkman