Mitchell Bradshaw Makes Pocket-Sized Magazines

Why did you start Jeans? What did you envision for it at the very beginning? 

I started Jeans when my previous magazine Southside came to its natural end. I had spent three years having a go at every role on a magazine's masthead, experimenting with the elements that make up any issue of a magazine, so I felt that I had a good idea of what I was good at and what areas might be good to work with others on. I’d started by making a magazine for myself, and it just so happened that a lot of other young people found it, and saw themselves in it. After that, I wanted to make one that opened the doors and let them get involved.

Why a print magazine over something digital? 

Probably because print has a soul. I always wanted to make the stuff that lines the shelves and walls of people in the process of defining themselves. When I was a kid I cut all the pages out of the school library's copy of Jamel Shabazz’s Back In The Days and Ernie Paniccioli’s Who Shot Ya and surrounded myself with what I felt was the iconographic idea of cool. Now that I’ve had the chance to live a little myself, my shelves are full of forget-me-nots, arrest records, flyers, and the things I've found at parties – artifacts that act as starting points to stories I am afraid of forgetting. The magazines are just a continuation of that. Now when something really great, bad, exciting, or unbelievably weird happens, I write it down, format it, illustrate it, and print enough copies to keep it kicking around. 

The fact that everything online is ‘there forever’ makes it feel as magical as microplastics. I like print because it's here and now. The longer it survives, the more special it must be because it means it's survived the tide of everyday life. Print has that tactile quality. It is losable, findable, and shareable. To me, that more emotional experience is where the magic is.

How does the magazine relate to the rest of your practice? How did you find the process of putting it together? 

Like my studio, my bedroom, and my barnet, my practice is a mess most of the time. When I’ve finally pulled together every scrap and submission, formatted it and filled in the gaps with photos, I feel a unique sense of calm. Then I feel a huge sense of dread that the lethal number of open Adobe applications will crash and corrupt my project before I can deliver it to my printers. When all is said and done, completing a magazine is an incredible feeling. It’s a bit like getting out of really cold water.

Why did you think it was necessary to document this world? 

Well, if there’s one thing that staying out for days on end, pillaging your pockets, and ploughing through party supplies isn’t conducive to, it’s a healthy relationship with long-term memory. I thought these magazines could be a way of helping to keep a loose timeline of that time in our lives. 

The more personal answer to why I feel the need to document this world, is that without other people having done it before, I might have gotten the idea that there was something really wrong with me. Whatever it is you're into, knowing that it’s not just you who likes to do that thing is really important. It’s also useful to hear what went well and what went west for the poor sods that came before, so you can crack on for longer. 

I want to coax out a more impactful impression of the weird and rowdy sides to this scene by encouraging the people in it to be a little more diligent in documenting it. There can be a lot more to sharing a story than just showing off. I find writing it down better as a means of welcoming the other heads in than just taking a video on your phone.

What’s the worst part of working on the magazine? 

The worst part about making a magazine is coming to terms with the fact that making a magazine is not and will never be what it was. There is not going to be an office, there are not going to be advertisers, or a distribution deal, or a healthy budget, or any budget. There is not going to be an open bar at the issue launch and there is not going to be a subscription list. It’s going to be you, on your laptop, scouring for spelling mistakes and almost getting all of them. It’s not going to be the party your predecessors talk about but it’s also not going to be the part-time production of Instagram reels that your peers get paid for, so I’ll gladly take it.

What’s the best part? 

I like it when I’m getting patted down by a bouncer and they find a big stack of mags in my pocket. I always give them one to read while they're stuck out in the cold.

I’m interested in the size of Jeans. What was the thinking there?

I guess that’s why they made those massive jeans with the big back pockets in the nineties (back when people actually read magazines), because without a pair of those on, there's no way that thing is making it home with you. How is anyone meant to read a magazine that they can’t carry around with them? My shelves are full of books I had big plans to read but never found the time to, but catch me on the night bus with a dead phone battery and I’ll be reading the terms and conditions on the white sticker on a Clipper to keep me occupied. I guess I wanted to be realistic, and as my generation seems to struggle to find a quiet moment to read, I felt I needed to make something that would be in their pocket when that quiet moment finds them. 

The one resounding bit of advice I got from a magazine seminar I attended before starting Jeans was that retailers won't take A6 titles as they're too pocketable. I guess that's true, but if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, shoplifting might be the retail equivalent. 

My other genius design idea, which met a mixed reception, was my use of a varied font weight for the body of the magazine. It’s a thing called Bionic Reading and it’s meant to help people with learning difficulties keep their place on the page. It was developed by a Swedish typehouse who sell the licence for a few thousand pounds, and then I figured out how to code it into InDesign myself. I’ve spent my life trying those coloured sheets of plastic and whatnot, and I’ve never found anything that works better for my dyslexia. Some people have found it annoying, but I point those people in the direction of everything else ever written.

This issue’s theme is ‘spaces’, next is ‘items, objects, odds and ends’, how do you come up with each theme? And are you surprised at where these themes can take you? 

My approach to gathering stories is to cast a wide net and see what I catch. When certain submissions shine out to me, I start to pull in other stories around them. This way, when themes appear naturally, you know that they’ve been on our minds already. If you’re operating in the world of unlicensed music events, you’ll notice similar subject matter rearing its head. A couple of themes I’ve got coming up include: ‘Petty Crimes’, ‘Great Escapes’, ‘Collections’, and all things ‘Festivals’ for me to hand out in fields all summer long. If you’ve got anything for those, or anything to inspire another issue, send it in to: jeansmagazinesubmissions@gmail.com