Antenne Presents: Women in Print

Leah Gudmundson, Blue Moon: Blue Moon was inspired by a publication called Seminar, by the artist Wallace Berman. He was based in San Francisco in the 1950s and ’60s, and he was widely known for being an assemblage artist, but he also made this small mail-only publication. He collaged together writing and works from people who he admired, and in his own life too. So it was this small, really intimate publication. Blue Moon was my way of hearkening back to that moment, of something that was personal and inspired by your heroes in real life. 

Tori West, BRICKS: I did fashion communication at UWE, Bristol, but I spent the first year and a half doing fashion design. I always knew that I wanted to do something within fashion, and my mum was a seamstress, so I thought, ‘I'm going to copy that.’ But I hated pattern cutting, so I couldn’t do it. My advisor said, “What did you do when you were a kid?” I thought back, and even as young as eight or nine, I would cut up these magazines and piece my own together on my bedroom floor. I didn't have the terminology at the time, but I was basically making magazines on my bedroom floor. I just thought, ‘Maybe I'll just start a magazine, because I did that as a kid.’ 

Maria Dimitrova, AFM: AFM came about as part of a very long process. I did another magazine before it, also for Feeld, called Mal Journal. It was a much more pure, pamphlet-sized magazine and it was two things, really. It was a magazine that I didn't know existed, and it was designed to only have a few pieces per issue. It was very writer-led, and the idea was that it would be quite timeless, and at the same time each edition would feel complete. Mal had a short lifespan, like most things around the pandemic, and then years later Feeld wanted to revive its magazine. The company this time was in a different place, so we decided to make something new, and much more connected to wider culture, rather than just literary. 

MD, AFM: Funding a magazine is always a problem that you have to solve, and you solve it one way or another. I don't think there's a perfect model. AFM came out of Feeld, but there is a very important internal integrity, and there are boundaries when it comes to decision making. It really is the people on the mast head who make the decisions. To me, a magazine can only exist under those conditions. With that in mind, though, we really wanted to take the reality of the magazine being, in a way, a brand publication, and then see, how far can we stretch that? What can you actually do editorially that turns that into a creative challenge? A big part in our case was including Feeld members as contributors.

The criteria for that is that it’s still only work that we would be excited to include in the magazine, anyway, as editors. That proved a porousness between the brand and the magazine, because so many contributors who we already loved turned out to be Feeld members, or we would learn about other artists, or people with fantastic creative practices, through the app. So including the reality of the app in the finished product was very important, but on the other hand, we’re also doing one of the most counterintuitive things for a dating app, or digital company to do, which is to invest in a beautifully designed print publication.

TW, BRICKS: Every person who I meet who has started a magazine, says that they get their money from a different thing. It could be Substack, or white labelling, or ads, or events, but it never seems to be the same answer. I think you have to be a lot of different things to survive as a magazine now.

LG, BLUE MOON: I gain all of my money from advertising. It's my sustenance personally, and it’s how I pay my contributors. That can be difficult to grapple with, but the way I justify it is that I wouldn’t run an ad that's completely removed from my ethos. So a brand like Supreme, I justify because I grew up around skateboarders, and it's something that's dear to my heart. I find these little tricks so that I don't feel like I'm a sellout, or that I’m running things that are completely unrelated to the magazine.

TW, BRICKS: I really struggled to do the standard front and back ads. We’ve had interest, but it just never really goes through. I wasn't getting a good return on pitching for ads, and I didn't feel like it was very me anyway. In my case, I will do an event, or a 360 activation, so I have to do a lot more for that, maybe for less money than an ad would get. But I do feel that because we're such a community-focused publication, it makes sense for me to do it like that. 

I have turned down brands for different reasons too. I've turned down so many brands for Palestine, for years. One example that I turned down, a brand with dubious environmental ethics had offered a project, and we were in an awful financial position at the time. That doesn’t just affect me, it affects my team. I sat them all down individually, and said, “We've been offered this project, and we have no money.” I put the fee on the table, and every single one of them said, “We're not doing it.” Even though they knew it was going to affect cash flow. I'm really grateful that I have an understanding team, so that when I want to turn something down, I don't feel pressured to have to do it. I think we are really quite good with our ethics of saying no. 

MD, AFM: AFM started with the ‘single advertiser model’, which is what brand publications are. We've actually had a lot of interest from people who want to buy subscriptions, although we don't currently sell subscriptions. We have also had interest from advertisers, a lot of fashion advertisers, and we’ve turned everyone down because we don't sell advertising, for now. What we do is trade ads, which is actually a tradition within smaller, independent magazines. It’s mostly with magazines that have arts and literary communities, often places with which we share contributors. It happened quite naturally from our first conversations; we had four ad trades in the first issue, and I think 12 in this one. 

LG, BLUE MOON: The most stressful part is email reply time. I'm always on my computer, always waiting for some kind of reply, someone confirming their interest in contributing, or an advertiser confirming their support for the issue. Also, up to five days before the magazine goes to print something can wiggle around. So it's very volatile as a job, and you have to get comfortable with things floating around. 

MD, AFM: I feel like there are only two modes in magazines. When you’re at the beginning, and you have time, and then when you’re near the end and everything is due yesterday. No matter how much planning we do, it always seems to be those two speeds. The other thing too, is just being reactive, and allowing for changing course. 

We set high standards for ourselves, and we’re always trying to exceed them. The cover of our second issue, which was shot by Nan Goldin, happened very late in the day for us, and if we had stayed faithful to our original timeline, it would not have happened. But we sort of said, “Let’s jump on that opportunity.” It's about being able to do these things, and having the team that is willing to follow you. Without a team willing to do that, it doesn't work.

TW, BRICKS: I know it's a business now, but I started the magazine on my bedroom floor. It was my hobby. So if I'm going to invest all this money to do a print magazine, I have to be happy with the result. We used to do two issues a year, now we do one, because it was so stressful and I just never had a break. It was too much. In terms of flexibility, I do have this list in the back of my mind, of certain people or talent, who if we were offered but would miss our print deadlines, then we’d produce a whole other issue around them. 

MD, AFM: Because AFM is so new, we're still very much in the process of defining what it is. We actually made quite a big change from issue one to issue two, which was in our design and art direction. For the first issue we worked with a creative agency, who did a lovely job, and the Feeld design team were very involved too. For the second issue we hired a single person, Merel van den Berg, who used to be the art director of The Gentlewoman, and that’s been really important; having the person who is doing the creative direction be there from the very beginning of those editorial commissioning conversations, not just coming in and designing visuals as a response. 

Every issue is a bit of an evolution. We're always trying to push the envelope further, whether that's in terms of cover star, or the content and the visual language. Merel is very much still evolving the visual identity. I think she did an amazing job, because it's very hard to take something that exists and then, without full carte blanche to overhaul it, to just take it and change it a little bit. 

TW, BRICKS: When I started Bricks, I wished there had been other things like it when I moved to London. I felt really isolated, and I think the hardest thing was imagining myself in certain rooms. I worked at ID for a little bit as an editor, and I just felt really out of place. I feel like I failed a little bit in that role because I didn't feel confident enough. 

Once Bricks started to reach a more credible position, I thought, ‘What would have made it easier for me?’ I'd always been really passionate about alternative education, and I wanted to try and bridge that gap slightly, so we started the Learner Platform. We do things like trying to bring people on shoots with us, and any spaces that I'm in I try to invite members to come too. It’s like a mentorship initiative, because I really wish I had had someone looking out for me and telling me what to do in the early stages of my career.

LG, BLUE MOON: I had other jobs until three years ago. I was always an artist’s assistant or studio manager. So I made my bread and butter elsewhere, and then when I started getting advertising, I stopped. There is a kind of sweet spot of how poor you're willing to be, and then it takes a leap of faith. A lot of times you're juggling to be able to make things work. 

TW, BRICKS: I like job hopping, which is really bad to do in the industry. What I fell in love with the most at the magazine was that I can do different things each week. I can concentrate on socials, or I can write, then the next week, if I want to I can jump a bit more onto the talent agent side of things. I don't get bored and I'm constantly learning. I like having the freedom of being able to do a lot of different things.

MD, AFM: I more fell into this, rather than it being a considered decision. I was a freelance writer when I first did the first magazine with Feeld. So it started as one of my projects, and I still write on the side. To me, those two things, being an editor and writer, are parallel practices. I really cherish both, in different ways. It is difficult, sometimes they're in conflict. I feel like it's a different brain almost. 

There are always pockets, and ways to do things. My advice would always be to stay flexible in where and how you can practice. In my case, it just so happened that I was able to practice being an editor, and working with the kinds of writers who I really admire, within a dating app. If someone told me that 10 years ago, I would not have believed it. But it's about looking at the conditions of what allows you to do the work you want to do.

LG, BLUE MOON: If you want to start a publication, just do it, and start slow. I think not beginning with grandiose ideas is a good way to go.

MD, AFM: My advice might be almost the opposite. One of the most amazing experiences I had was running, for a very short time, a literary journal called Swimmers with a few friends of mine. It was funded by the Arts Council, which meant it had a really tiny budget. We didn’t pay ourselves, and we only had three pieces per issue. For one of our issues, we asked [the writer] Anne Boyer to contribute something. Everyone said, “She’ll never say yes.” But she did. She wrote an incredible essay which then formed part of her 2019 book The Undying. So my advice is: don't be afraid to ask the people you really admire. 

TW, BRICKS: Mine would be: don't feel like you need to pressure yourself to follow traditional paths. I think especially in fashion you have these systems, there’s all this pressure in terms of having two issues out a year, or a September issue. I always remind my team, “Don't feel pressured into falling into a system that was maybe taught to you in-house, because the reason we're doing our own thing is that that didn't work for us.” 

Something else that I say all the time: age shouldn’t be a timeline for how successful that you think you should be. Everyone is on different paths, so if you're from a marginalized background, or haven’t had different privileges, then you might be at different stages. You can change your mind, and it's never too late.