Once a month we invite our member magazine publishers and enthusiasts to guest-edit our fortnight email newsletter. The aim is to inspire others with magazine-related content, connect members and build our community so we can learn from each other.
This month our guest editor is Simon Esterson; editorial designer, art director and owner at Esterson Associates. You can follow Simon on LinkedIn or Eye on Instagram – remember to connect and say hello!
Tell us about yourself
I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon. The deadline is tomorrow morning. This is my world: juggling deadlines on multiple projects. Sound familiar? I design magazines, books and newspapers with my colleague Holly Catford and co-own the international graphic design magazine Eye with the magazine’s editor John L. Walters.
What’s on your mind?
Eye has just published issue 109. It’s aimed at everybody involved in graphic design. 120 pages, including a gatefold, three different Pantone specials alongside the cymk print, beautiful papers from Fedrigoni. Expensive print geek heaven.
We try to publish four times a year. We had the launch party for 109 on the Wednesday and on the Thursday John and I were looking at possible contents for issue 110 over our bowls of ramen at the Japanese in the railway arches round the corner from our little studio in Dalston.
John looks after the writing, editing, social media and co-ordinating with Renata who handles our ad sales and I look after design and production. John and I have been involved in our different ways with Eye since its beginning. It has been owned by several publishers and eventually, rather than see it close, we bought it. Although we had both been around publishing for many years, the business side was usually somebody else’s job. Suddenly distribution, subscriptions and ad sales were our responsibility. We were enthused with the idea of being in control (more pages! better paper! later deadlines!) and probably a little naive in thinking that if we made a great magazine people would somehow hear about it and buy a copy.
We’ve had (as they say) a lot of learnings since then. Our team is five. Janet brilliantly manages the money and co-ordination with our outsourced distribution and subscriptions. Amy works part time with John on research and writing. Holly works with me on design and production. We’ve managed to survive the near death of the country’s newsagent network, the alleged death of print, the explosion of social media and the appalling consequences on distribution and mailing of Brexit. We’re still here and asking the key questions for any magazine owner: how do we reach new readers and sell more single copies, how do we acquire and retain subscribers?
What’s the best article you’ve
read this month?
There are two articles that come to mind.
I’m a fan of The Fence magazine. It has great writing and its design uses drawings rather than photography. Most of it is printed in black with the occasional bit of red: it shows that for the right audience you can make a visually powerful magazine without a huge production budget. I loved their article about how the world of private equity is destroying the restaurant industry. The drawings for this feature are by Paul Cox.
Show us an incredible magazine cover
In contrast (and as a designer I’m supposed to like visual things) the car magazine Magneto uses really strong art direction of photography and illustration to make a powerful magazine. And it has ads for classic cars with multi-million pound price tags. Forget Autocar.
What’s your top tip for publishers?
Make your magazine with a designer. Even if you have great content, intelligent design can give it the right form. Even basic elements, like the magazine’s structure, its typefaces and the column width, could be improved in many of the magazines I see.
Questions for the community
What subject or issue would you like the International Magazine Centre Members Group to discuss and untangle over on LinkedIn?
My question is: We want to attract new subscribers. But we don’t want to discount. What have you found the most effective way of increasing your subscriber numbers?
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