What is an independent magazine?
I spend a lot of time talking about independent magazines, but what exactly does that mean? What is an independent magazine? And what makes it different from the various other forms of publishing you might come across? It’s a massive subject but I think there are some relatively simple answers, and in this overview I’ll give an introduction to what independent magazines are and why people publish them.
In 2014 I attended the first Indiecon conference in Hamburg. Held in a beautiful villa on Lake Alster, it brought together 100 publishers for a series of talks and discussions themed around the question, “Was ist indie?” By the end of the weekend there was no definitive answer, but the best formulation I heard was, “The chiefs are the makers”; the people who are financially responsible for the magazine are also directly involved in writing stories, taking photos, designing pages, or otherwise making the thing.
As with any simple definition it’s not perfect, and it instantly raises its own questions. Take Monocle, for example, which was launched by journalist Tyler Brûlé – he’s still there, he’s still one of the people with financial responsibility for the business, and as editorial director he certainly has control over what makes it onto the page. Under the Indiecon 2014 definition, then, Monocle is most definitely an independent magazine.
And yet when we talk about independent magazines there’s a notion that they should be somehow different. Monocle is widely distributed, particularly in train stations and airports, where it reaches its target audience of international businessmen. It’s renowned for its advertising and brand partnerships, with pages of watches and luxury goods in every issue. And of course the magazine is just one part of the Monocle machine, which these days also includes a digital radio station, events, books, and a vast array of branded merchandise.
But I stand by my belief that Monocle is an independent magazine, and I think it’s useful for revealing the prejudices of what an independent magazine ‘should’ be. Because there’s often the sense that a real independent magazine should only exist as a labour of love; they should be hard to find because they’re only sold in specialist magazine shops; and they probably shouldn’t have any advertising, either because the publishers don’t want to compromise their independence, or because selling ad pages is really hard work.
This stereotype fits lots of independent magazines, but there are just as many that are totally different. One of my favourite things about independent publishing is the massive range it encompasses – people make independent magazines for all sorts of different reasons, each one encapsulating the world in its own particular way. And by definition there’s no single organisation that brings them all together – there’s no Association of Independent Magazines that you can check to stay up to date with what they’re doing.
The best way to get an understanding of what’s going on is to immerse yourself in the world of independent magazines. If you have a shop near you that sells independent magazines, go and buy from them! It’s hard work for publishers to make money from these magazines, but it’s hard for the retailers too and they need your support. Follow Magculture from London, Athenaeum from Amsterdam, Issues from Toronto… There are loads of great independent magazine shops out there, each one presenting its own range of titles, so you can get a taste of the magazine universe as they see it.
And of course you should follow Stack too – we post on Instagram most days, and if you sign up for our newsletter we’ll deliver all our latest news, reviews, special offers and other things straight to your inbox on the last Thursday of every month.
In the meantime, the following selection of independent magazines shows the huge variety of approaches that are currently being taken. For each one I’ve included a brief description of what the magazine is about, and how the design, editorial, and production come together to communicate a coherent message, creating a magazine with its own unique identity.
Nuts – the big, thick magazine
Created by superstar art director Richard Turley, Nuts is a response to the conventions of fashion magazines, and like many of those titles, it’s absolutely huge. The pages are filled with pictures of people wearing clothes, but Turley wanted to do things differently, as he explained in an interview with the Guardian: “‘I was thinking about whether any of the fashion images I see inform the way I dress and they just don’t,’ he says. ‘Style chooses you – not the other way around – and when you force it, everyone can tell. That’s why fashion freaks me out. But I get there’s sex and glamour to artifice too.’”
Searching for his own fashion vernacular, he chose not to use professional photographers, preferring instead to have stylists put together the looks and then take pictures themselves. He produced the whole thing in black and white, on a rough matte stock that looks and feels like the complete opposite of slick, glossy paper. And he infuses the whole thing with a poetic, subversive tone, as snatches of text run between the images and produce a sense of creative rebellion. The physical heft of the magazine is a big part of the overall effect, the stark black and white cover standing out wherever you leave it, and enticing readers into strange stories that are told in snatches of lucidity amongst the fashion-led chaos.
Real Review – the small, slim magazine
Published by London-based cultural institute and architectural practice Real Foundation, this slim magazine was conceived with an architect’s attention to detail. When he began planning Real Review, editor-in-chief Jack Self started by checking Royal Mail’s pricing bands, and set himself the challenge of creating something that could be posted as cost-efficiently as possible. He came up with the innovative idea of adding an extra vertical fold, so that the magazine would fit within a standard letter-sized envelope. And he calculated the maximum number of pages they could produce and still fit within the weight bracket for a standard letter.
These decisions led to a small, slim, densely packed magazine that grapples with the question of what it means to live today, and over the last 15 issues Real Review has become one of my favourite independent magazines. The last issue was ready to be printed when the editorial team decided to remove all images from the magazine as a recognition of the terrible acts of violence being committed in Gaza, replacing them with empty image frames and alt text showing what would have been there. At a time when images of suffering are so ubiquitous and so easy to scroll past, I found these textual markers to be incredibly effective.
Sad Men – the magazine with no words
The first issue of Sad Men consists of 24 pages, filled with pictures of men in various states of sadness. There are virtually no words in the magazine, but a slip of paper included with the zine includes the Sad Manifesto:
“Dear reader, Sad Men is an experimental playground. We love to normalize the absurd and find nonsense in the mundane. We work with the power of sequence and exaggeration. We use zine making as a way to explore constructs within (stock-)photography. NO FUN NO GAIN. nb Sad men are feminists too.”
Created by a pair of photo editors at Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, it’s a brilliantly absurd expression of a single idea; a quick, lightweight bit of fun that allows readers to see what they want in the publication. Other issues have included Angry Women, Dead Eyes, Serial Killers and Leg (featuring lots of pictures of legs, obviously).
The Whitney Review – the magazine with lots of words
A magazine that’s all about reading, The Whitney Review of New Writing consists of interviews with authors, essays about books and reading, and reviews of books. There’s a comic strip and a kind of short graphic novel in this fourth issue, but aside from that, the only imagery in the black and white inside pages comes from the advertising, which feature a carefully selected group of brands and organisations.
The simple staple binding allows the reader to fold the magazine back on itself, creating a lovely, unfussy reading experience, and the big pages full of text emphasise a wonderfully focused approach. The message seems to be that there are no images here because they’re not needed – if you’re reading this magazine, it’s because you like reading. So let’s read!
Buffalo Zine – the magazine with lots of adverts
Every issue of Buffalo Zine starts from scratch, producing a totally different piece of print according to whatever the issue’s concept demands. Over the years that has meant an issue that was presented as a series of holiday brochures; one that was presented as a cookbook; and one that arrived as a hardback, cloth-bound coffee table book to celebrate the reopening of the Chelsea Hotel in New York. This latest issue uses newsprint pages and a design style that mimics tabloid newspapers to explore ideas about fame, success, and what that might cost an individual.
But whatever the magazine looks like, a few things remain consistent: First of all, there are lots of editorial fashion shoots, which lampoon the fashion industry while also being part of it. And secondly, there’s always a healthy amount of fashion advertising, which presumably serves the dual purpose of helping to pay for making the magazine, while also showing readers that this subversion is coming from inside – Buffalo Zine is both part of the fashion industry and critical of it, and 20 pages of adverts before the editor’s letter helps to emphasise that. It must be an almost impossible balance to strike, but they’ve managed it for 20 issues and I hope they’ve still got the energy for some more.
Fukt – the magazine with no adverts
The magazine for contemporary drawing, Fukt was launched in 1999 and each annual issue examines a different subject and its interaction with drawing. This latest issue focuses on drawing and nature, with beautiful in-depth stories investigating the different ways that nature has inspired and challenged artists over the years, and a die-cut cover that invites readers to create their own leafy, shady artwork.
It’s an extremely high quality publication, and it’s a labour of love for editor-in-chief Bjørn Hegardt and designer Ariane Spanier, which probably goes a long way to explaining why there is almost no advertising in the magazine. (Half a page is given over to two adverts – one for the Miss Read art book fair, and one for the Drawing Now art fair.) I bet there are loads of other advertisers that would want to reach the Fukt readership, but selling ad space is difficult, and probably neither Bjørn not Ariane want to spend their time doing that. And they definitely wouldn’t want to include anything that risks compromising the fantastically elegant and authoritative magazine they have created together over the last 26 years.
The Lemming – the DIY magazine
Beginning as a university project initiated by creative director Gabriel Carr and his friend Dylan Hatton while they were both studying at Manchester Metropolitan University, The Lemming started life as a platform for showcasing up and coming creativity. It has grown over the years, though, adding more team members, and it has transformed into a publication with a strong political identity, built around grassroots reporting of social justice issues.
The magazine is risograph printed and collated by the team, with every copy assembled by hand by one of the writers, editors or designers; a DIY ethos that reflects and reinforces the magazine’s wider editorial aims. And while there’s plenty of serious reporting of big stories, there’s also a welcome sense of fun, with a cryptic crossword, a story about human statues, and one about furries helping to lighten the tone of the current issue.
Notebook – the brand magazine (honourable mention)
A print magazine published by movie streaming service Mubi, Notebook emphasises the fanatical love of cinema that defines the brand. Mubi is known for digging deep into independent and arthouse cinema, so of course it makes sense that Notebook follows the same path, with brilliantly geeky stories on subjects like the quest to make the perfect fake blood, and lists of ‘things a filmmaker should know’, by visual artist Tacita Dean and director Sergei Loznitsa.
Of course, the chiefs can’t really be the makers in this case – Efe Cakarel, CEO of Mubi, is listed at the top of the masthead as the magazine’s publisher, but I doubt that he was closely involved with taking pictures, writing stories or laying out pages. I think Notebook is worth mentioning here, though, because it stands as an example of so many brand magazines that hold to all the same values as the independent magazines we love, using beautiful and memorable storytelling to build a relationship with readers. Of course they’re normally doing so with a broader marketing KPIs in mind, but I don’t think that should stop them from being considered as great magazines in their own right.
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