Holly is the Founder and Art Director of Pit magazine
And talked about How to work with brands and keep your soul
To watch the full recording of Holly’s talk, please buy a ticket for all the main stage recordings of Magazine Street, or if you were an attendee on the day, please email us for the password to watch.
About Holly
Holly is an editorial designer and has worked with Simon Esterson since 2012, over this time she’s worked on redesigns of The Sunday Times and The Guardian as well as for clients such as the NZZ, Museums Journal, Fedrigoni and Hardie Grant. She’s currently art director of History Today as well as art editor of Eye and Pulp. She founded Pit in 2017 and Cheese in 2020. She lives in Bristol with her two cats and two tortoises.
About Pit magazine
Pit is a magazine about food. Launched in 2017 by food writer Helen Graves, photographer Robert Billington and art director Holly Catford.
Pit has evolved considerably to position itself as a bold, thought-provoking magazine that challenges the obvious narrative across a wide spectrum of food topics. Our independent status gives us free rein to choose only the pieces we think are most valuable to our readers and to have a huge amount of fun.
Each themed issue uncovers the most interesting and unusual food stories from around the world through people, traditions, techniques and ingredients. We’ve cooked a giant goat shawarma for 30 people in a south London snowstorm, themed whole issues around sausages and MSG, and travelled the world through Sicily, Morocco, Malaysia, and Zanzibar in search of dinner.
Our stories are told by award-winning writers and our features are designed, illustrated, and photographed in bold, exciting ways.
About Holly’s talk
Pit is a magazine that does things a bit differently – from how we pay our contributors (early!) to what goes into our magazine, to what it looks like.
This year we’ve started working with brands, and actually enjoying it. We’ve collaborated with a festival to produce a newspaper, we’ve reprinted a sold out issue specially for one of our favourite producers and we’re currently working with another brand to produce a whole themed issue.
A one fits all approach doesn’t work, each of our partners get a totally bespoke service. By doing this we’ve managed to diversify our income and keep printing for a long time to come.
Connect with Holly
Instagram: Holly Catford
Web: Pit