Stack Awards 2019 – the winners!

by Kitty Drake in November 2019

Update

Last night was our snazziest ever Stack Awards — in a suite of rooms at Somerset House — with canapés, a GIF machine and endless wine. We received over 500 entries this year, and the competition was very strong. Magazine of the Year was so heart-wrenching that our judges, Will Hudson of It’s Nice That and Pentagram partner Astrid Stavro, had to go away and sleep on it before giving their final decision. They were so split they wanted to announce a draw.

In the end Flaneur won, taking Art Director of the Year as well for their beautiful, violently pink issue on Taipei. Flaneur is a nomadic magazine — the team quite literally moves itself to a different place every issue — and co-editor Fabian Saul flew in last night from Paris, their next location, to pick up both trophies. In his acceptance speech, he spoke about treasuring the chance encounters with strangers on the street that are the foundation of an issue.

But the best speech of the night came from MacGuffin’s Ernst van der Hoeven. Picking up editor of the year on behalf of himself and his co-editor Kirsten Algera, he spoke about the joy of feeling connected to other mag nerds at the Awards: “Kirsten and I are a two headed monster sitting on a huge table in an attic in Amsterdam and it’s pretty lonely sometimes. It’s so good to know there’s this whole world of independent makers and thinkers.”

There was a great feeling in the room. Partly that was down to the editorial team from the South London Review of Hand Dryers, who came wearing eye-patches and holding a large piece of focaccia that, inexplicably, was wearing an eye-patch too. But mainly it was to do with a sense of optimism; the way people were talking about passion, and the magazines that can come out of it. Ernst finished by asking, “Why do we do this? When I’m in distress I ask myself that. People in this room keep on doing what you’re doing. It has worth”.