Last night was the second London Printout held at The Book Club, hosted by the Stack magazine subscription founder Steve Watson, and Jeremy Leslie, Blogger at magCulture. I attended the previous magazine event back in April, loved it, blogged about my new discovery Delayed Gratification, and came back hungry for more new mag discoveries.

The event features a panel of speakers from the independent mag world including publishers, editors, writers. At the last event the panel had a group Q&A, but this time had 5 minutes to each answer the question: “What is your favourite magazine?”

It’s a difficult question for any mag lover to answer, as Jeremy Leslie pondered when he went first on the podium; “How do you choose one mag you think is inspirational and represents what you think is great about magazines?” His answer was mono.kultur, a Quarterly A5 magazine produced in Berlin, which to him was exemplar of it’s kind. Each issue focused on an artist, past issues have featured Tilda Swinton, David Shrigley, Nine Inch Nails, Ai Weiwei and David LaChapelle. But was makes the magazine really special is that the A5 format changes to suit the artist featured; from portrait to landscape booklets, foldout posters, and with some ‘experimental scents’.

David Hepworth, owner of Development Hell which publishes magazines like Mix-Mag and The Word, started his magazine homage with a story about the Burmese Python crisis in the Florida Everglades. No, I didn’t get it either, until he revealed it was one of the many stories featured in The New Yorker magazine. It is a weekly features magazine that strives to tell the interesting stories from around the world that other mediums wouldn’t tell, but has a loyal readership due to the strong pull back to the magazine. It has featured words by feminist Ariel Levy, and Malcom Gladwell incorrectly predicting last year that the revolution will not be tweeted.

Next up was Marissa Brickman, editor of the NY/Lon based but also multi-continental Sup, one of my favourite music magazines. She answered the brief by picking a magazine that was the most influential in her life, which was Ray Gun, which produced it’s last issue in 2000. It was an experimental American Rock & Roll magazine based in Santa Monica, completely different to the popular Rolling Stone magazine. She spoke of the Art director David Carson who ‘pushed the design to the next level’, producing a magazine was may not have been the most user friendly, but was very influential for her own magazine.

Danny Miller from The Church of London was a late addition to the line-up, due to Tony Brook from Spin design studio unable to make the event. Danny’s mag was a touchingly personal choice, and was introduced to him by a tutor while he was studying in Manchester. Adrenalin magazine was a surf/skate/snow magazine with a strong readership that weren’t necessarily Surfers/Skaters/snowboarders, they just loved the instinctive quality and bold choices. It was a magazine produced with love and readers were instantly smitten, including Danny, who badgered the team to gain work experience with them, and his route into the magazine world. The Church of London now produce the popular film magazine Little White Lies, and the newer Huck.

Last up was the Mark Valley, the owner of the Magma chain of bookstores and editor of Elephant magazine. He had deliberated over choosing the New Yorker, but wanted to pick a magazine that was eloquent in the magazine language that can be difficult to speak; a hybrid of words, pictures and captions that instinctively tells the reader where to go. His choice was Purple, a fashion magazine launched in 1992 about life with the thickness of a bible. He admitted that when he first read it he didn’t get the context of the mag, but found that he couldn’t put it away and it eventually got under his skin. He thinks it’s a mag was probably gorged and influence lots of other magazine founders, as he can see it’s style in other magazines like Fantastic Man.

Love how all the speakers instinctively each picked an independent Arts, Literary, Music, Sports and Fashion mag. Some old, some new, some closed down, but all will be looked into. Thanks again to Steve and Jeremy for a great night, keep up the great work.

And if you haven’t been to Printout yet, Go.  You might get a free mag for your troubles, and countless others to look through.

Tags: Adrenalin, Ai Weiwei, Ariel Levy, Danny Miller, David Carson, David Hepworth, David LaChapelle, David Shrigley, Delayed Gratification, Development Hell, Elephant Magazine, Fantastic Man, Jeremy Leslie, London, Magazine, Magazines, MagCulture, Magma bookstores, Malcom Gladwell, Marissa Brickman, Mix-Mag, Mono.kultur, New Yorker, Nine Inch Nails, Purple magazine, Ray Gun, Spin Magazine, Stack Magazines, subscriptions, Sup, The Book Club, The Church of London, The Word, Tilda Swinton