Ruben
How's your day?
Steven Watson
Yeah it's not bad, busy
Ruben
Cool. I've got a few questions to help me with my
dissertation and so I'll just start with 'Who are you and what do you do?'
Steven Watson
I'm Steve Watson and I run magazine it's called Stack.
Ruben
I understand like stack magazines has been around over a
decade now and I was wandering if you could tell me about how it's developed
and changed over those 10 years?
Steven Watson
Well sure. So pretty much the first five years it was
something that I did on my own and it was this thing that was like you know I
had a job when I was doing it, I was working one day a week in two days and we
had three days a week. But all that time there was always like other jobs
actually paid my wage. And then after about five years I went full time and
after about six years I started hiring people to work with me and yeah now we
are where we are now and basically that's at each stage with that as you can do
it's like you know what one day a week, all I could think was I'm not sure what
I could do if I could do two days a week and at each point as you might sort of
add more capacity you're able to do more things and the subscription is still
the main part of what we do. These days we also have an online shop where you
can just go buy a magazine and we run an annual awards ceremony which is just
happened last week so it's kind of like you know we built out and built out.
Ruben
So, when did that become your main job then?
Steven Watson
I reckon that would have been around 2013.
Ruben
Why do you think it's important for people to read magazines
then? Obviously, it's a passion of yours so why should people care?
Steven Watson
So my degree was English and when I was there I had a lots
of books to read but I also I always felt like magazines had a guilty pleasure
where they're sort of easier then book space. I think big pictures, headlines
and hope was sort of like help me to get into stream and think that like if you
go to the opposite extreme. like now obviously these days where I spend most of
my day looking at a screen. So, like I just have like a huge amount of black
stuff coming up the whole time. Get my email twitter or whatever it is. I think
that like print magazines have kept that kind of slowness to them. So, you
basically know when you sit down and read a magazine you fundamentally can't do
anything else and you read, just sat reading a mag. I think to me the thing I
like about it is I sort of like the contemplations compared to looking at
something you know every day.
Ruben
I think it's like a conclusiveness that you get maybe that
you might not get on other platforms. What do you think all the benefits of
having an online platform for publishing?
Steven Watson
I mean the reach is potentially way way higher than it is in
print. It's actually way cheaper than doing something in print and I mean like
virtually all the independent magazines that we work with have some kind of
online it's like it's sort of like, print is often working in opposition to
things like that but that's obviously nonsense we all live our lives online you
know, these magazines all have to take advantage of the best they can get from
digital to be able to promote what they're doing in print.
Ruben
Do you think it's possible for a magazine to exist without
any online platform or presence at all?
Steven Watson
I mean I guess it's possible yeah and particularly if that
were like you know parts or get behind the idea behind it. Did you see Der
Greif magazine? That's a gentlemen's photography magazine which we sent out on
Stack this summer and the concept for the latest issue was wanted to look at an
online censorship and so they basically took a lot of images that would be too
explicit or too political, basically for whatever reason those images would not
be allowed on Facebook. And so that has a bit of an exercise in looking at
censorship of images that we have going on the whole time and don’t even realise
it. They made that as a print magazine and that's part of that concept they
literally only released the cover of the magazine online. So the only way that
you can see this magazine is to actually have to go to print.
Ruben
Have you heard of Cut magazine from Berlin? They don't have
an online presence and they've worked for 10 years through print and I guess I
just wondered how that worked and how they were won loads of awards for it as
well. I guess like the idea of being a DIY fashion magazine resembles the fact
that they stick to print and physical and they stick to the DIY original idea
of it.
Steven Watson
If it's the one I'm thinking of they go really big on
physical production so they'll stage amazingly elaborate photoshoots where
something they could do by photoshopping an image is done for real in front of
the camera.
Ruben
How important do you think it is to print and publish in in
an age today where the environment is so taboo, and we need to be so
considerate of it?
Steven Watson
I'm sure I'd say that it is important in the sense that you
know we have to have it otherwise like when you shoot something really
important. I just think it's more that there's been this assumption for a long
time that now that the internet and that digital exists print will therefore
die. I think that whereas you know if you look at sort of newspapers for
example there's a very strong case for saying that the big newspapers will not
be printed on paper so that much longer, Monday to Friday. And whereas I think
this sort of function that these magazines fulfil in terms of having something
that you know useful like you buy it you hope you really like it and can keep
it on the shelf forever. I sort of can't really see that going away. I think
that's really sad that appeals to people beyond the actual communication or
lack the words and pictures.
Ruben
Do you know of any magazines that like practice
sustainability to like the core of that print design?
Steven Watson
Yeah absolutely there are a few. And we had an event at the
start of this year on like sort of green independent publishing so I'd say take
a look back at that and actually the really interesting thing that came out of
that I think is as soon as someone says they are environmentally sustainable,
there's a question of like how that's measured and what that means. So, for
example at that event we had somebody who said you know very proudly ‘well you
know we print these printed because they have no landfill policy', and then
somebody else was like 'yeah but that just means that burn it all.' So the like
kind of these things the same sort of like type of inks that only to the thing
then this kind of temptation I think because you just want a headline
"yeah we went green" that people sort of reach for that but there's
obviously a lot of complexity behind that. I read a really interesting thing recently about how to
charge an iPad. It takes a negligible amount of electricity, almost nothing,
but the amount of power it takes to stream a movie per month is the same amount
of electricity as it takes to run a refrigerator for a month. It is basically
the data stuff that you're watching with film is obviously stored on a server
somewhere and like that and that's this like huge power source. And it's a
book, the book was called New Dark Age by James Bridle.
Ruben
What do you think is
the future of digital magazines? Do you think that it'll overtake print and
begin subscribing online?
Steven Watson
I'm not sure what a digital magazine is. When I-pads first
came out, there was this kind of rush to me like Adobe and they did it in
partnership with Condé Nast for like sort of establishing what digital magazine
is. And that's why I sure would like to sell away. I think these days I mean a
digital magazine is effectively a website. So, what's the difference between a
digital mag and a website. The easy access to information essential away so I doesn’t
really I don't like sort of I don't look to digital or magazine publishing as
being a big thing that is like talking to people looking to use the future.
Ruben
Do you know e-flux magazine?
I guess that defines itself as a digital magazine. But then I guess some
print magazines use that digital for different uses maybe.
Steven Watson
But well I guess what I mean is it's more like when I think
about someone sitting down with like an iPad or a phone, something like that
going for a specific environment to reach stuff, I mean that happens, for
instance some good news websites so maybe that you might read the guardian of
the times or something like that and that I'm like know people who do that. I
do not. I just don't know people are like right. I know I'm going to do now I'm
going to take out my iPad and open up this publication. I just don't know that
they exist.
Ruben
It's true. Printed information goes in easier as well
compared to digital because we usually skim it. Last question for you which is
sort of a summary of my essay is that do you think that online platforms need
to coexist with print platforms to able to create a successful magazine?
Steven Watson
So, I think that, and like I said before I think that like
virtually all print magazines need to have something online. Unless it's really fundamental to the idea of what print magazine is, I don't think
that all online platforms need a print. It's pretty quiet land and that's neat.
So, what they're doing is due to speed and the accessibility so I think
that's a pretty one-sided relationship to be honest.
