Review of The Modern Magazine Conference 2014

A few weeks ago I attended the second ever Modern Magazine conference hosted by Jeremy Leslie (MagCulture). I thought I would share a bit about what we heard on the day.

After leaving Bristol bright and early (well, maybe just early) and having issues trying to park somewhere near Reading West station, then rushing across London — I just about managed to grab my seat in time for the first talk at the LLC.

The day kicked off with Rob Orchard from Delayed Gratification, he talked us through the values and ideas behind the self-coined ‘slow journalism’ approach to a magazine. Rob shared how DG aims to deliver news that happened a few months before, which is starkly different to the instant news feed that Twitter, for example, offers us. DG look at stories from a slightly different angle to the rest of the market, and is able to offer great hindsight when they review their stories.

Next up was Kai Brach’s talk about his journey in the creation of Offscreen. He talked us through his career from a web designer to designing a print magazine. Kai shared great thoughts on the finality of print, including the struggles and joys of looking through the magazine once it is back from the printers. He also talked about how reading print is much more linear, unlike reading on the web, where the onslaught of links throughout often stops us from finishing the article.

Veronica Ditting then spoke about the art direction decisions taken in designing The Gentlewoman. She showed us the huge number of variations and concepts they go through when designing the magazine, and how they make the big decision of a theme colour in each issue, as the content almost always lends itself to be a particular colour.

After a little break for tea, biscuits and browsing the beautiful magazine stand set up in the foyer we started again with Gideon Spanier interviewing Jeremy Langmead, the content manager of Christies. This was a really intriguing discussion on branded content, how this works with Christies in a variety of mediums and how we are all branded content in one way or another.

We then heard from Elena Schlenker of Gratuitous Type about the joys and pleasure found in creating a magazine. She is very experimental with what can be done with print and not with web, which creates a unique and personal magazine. Elena shared how she can do what she wants, as she is the editor, art director, marketing manager and deals with distribution too.

Just before lunch Simon Lyle of Hot Rum Cow spoke on how they hope to provide their readers with good brain food, instead of just an overload of information. He shared about how there is such creative freedom in making a magazine, allowing them to have a break from the client work in their studio.

After lunch we started with Peter Houston talking about The Magazine Diaries, a project where 100 magazine lovers had written 100 words on the subject of magazines. The project is raising money for MagAid.

Next David Moretti, the creative director of Wired Italia talked us through their huge selection of amazing work, explaining the thoughts and processes behind it all. He shared a quote from John Plunkett that got the whole room scribbling in their notebooks; ‘Extraordinary information presented in extraordinary ways.’

Danny Miller took to the stage next, visually taking us on his journey from Little White Lies right through to the eagerly anticipated Weapons of Reason. He spoke about how creativity connects, sharing valuable lessons he learnt which led to the creation of WoR. There was a serious amount of incredible work in the slideshow too.

Danielle Pender of Riposte was up next sharing the values and ethics of their magazine, making Riposte different to the majority of women’s magazines in the mainstream news stands today. Danielle also spoke of how she tries to remain a beginner in the creation of the magazine, and how this brings renewed creativity and ideas.

After another short break Steve Watson of Stack hosted a discussion about independent publishing with Rob Orchard, Kai Brach, Simon Lyle, Danny Miller and Danielle Pender. There were really insightful thoughts on the struggles of distribution and practical tips for marketing a magazine, incredibly helpful for anyone thinking of starting their own magazine. Also talked about was the future of indie publishing, the current growth of indie magazines and the gap between indie and mainstream magazines.

The penultimate speaker was Pekka Toivonen of FAT magazine, talking about the magazine being an art form in itself. He showed us some of the other work created in their studio in Finland and shared funny stories and ideas behind their projects, concluding that we should be uncompromising in our work.

To finish off the day Jeremy Leslie interviewed the brilliant Adam Moss of New York magazine whilst a very impressive showreel of the magazine’s work played behind them. The main points of the discussion were on how the different mediums of digital and print were used with New York magazine, and how it has recently gone from a weekly to bi-weekly publication. It was amazing to get an insight into the daily workings of such a big magazine and the content created for it.

Overall, I found that the day was a brilliant celebration of magazines, full of fascinating stories, great advice and really interesting thoughts. I went away with pages full of scribbles to decipher and digest and feeling thoroughly inspired. I can’t wait for next year…