Stack Magazines

"How can you change without changing?" Marco Velardi is editor-in-chief of Apartamento, the iconic interiors magazine that is currently celebrating its 20th issue and 10th anniversary. We met up in Berlin to speak about the enduring pressures of independent publishing, the things they've learned along the way, and the challenge of keeping a magazine fresh while remaining familiar.

"It was three of us in a white van." Thomas Sumner is the creative director of The Essential Journal, the men's fashion and lifestyle title based in Liverpool. Now distributing 50,000 copies every month across Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and London, and working with high end advertisers like Rolex and Jaguar, he reflects on the title's rapid growth, its editorial ethos and the opportunities that lay ahead.

"I'm always waiting for the surprise." Christoph Amend is the editor-in-chief of Germany's Zeit Magazin, the magazine distributed with news weekly Die Zeit. In this conversation he speaks about his earliest experience of writing articles, how his first professional magazine jobs taught him that creativity and profitability must go hand in hand, and why it's important for him as an editor to keep on writing.

Hear all the judges' comments and winners' acceptance speeches from this year's Stack Awards, recorded live at The Queen of Hoxton on Monday 20 November 2017.

"Eastern Europe deserves a means of expression." Kajet is a new journal published from Bucharest and dedicated to telling unheard stories from across the region. First-time magazine makers Petricā Mogos and Laura Naum dropped into the Stack office this week to speak about their experiences making the magazine, and to explain why we need a fresh and authentic voice of Eastern Europe.

"I think we needed this period of very beautiful and luxurious magazines to prove that print was of worth... but now we're moving on." Ruth Jamieson is the author of Print is Dead Long Live Print and Angharad Lewis is the author of So You Want to Publish a Magazine, and together they judged the Student Magazine of the Year category in this year's Stack Awards. They came over to Somerset House for the judging session this week, and after we'd picked our winner, we sat down for a wider conversation about the current state of independent magazine publishing.

"You guys don't make dog owners look crazy..." Julian Victoria and Emily Rogers are the editors of Dog, the lifestyle magazine for people who love dogs. With its ultra simple cover concept, Dog has become a familiar sight on newsstands around the world, and in this episode they reveal their motivations in making the magazine, and explain why their readers aren't quite as doggy as you might expect.

"If we can't capitalise on football being more popular than it's ever been, we probably shouldn't be in the business of making a football magazine!" Mundial is the football lifestyle magazine that was launched by Dan Sandison and Seb White as a one-off print project for the 2014 World Cup. Fast forward three years, and the co-founders tell the story of how their quarterly magazine has evolved from that first issue, and why they're aiming to make the most of next year's World Cup in Russia

"This is the survival mode for magazines – they'll never disappear because they're so beautifully made... You can't do that online." Marc Robbemond and Reny van der Kamp are two of the people who run Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum, the Amsterdam magazine shop that's an Aladdin's cave for print enthusiasts. In this episode they speak about a life spent selling independent magazines, and the boom they're seeing in indie print.

"People of Print is about everyone being part of it – we're not just some company telling you what's cool." Marcroy Smith is the founder of People of Print, the organisation that started out as a simple list of screen printers and expanded to become a publishing company, a printer, a retailer and many more things along the way. In this conversation he recounts the often accidental journey he has taken over the years, as he responded to problems he encountered and tried to find a better, fairer way to put print out into the world.