Stack: October

This was much better than I thought it was going to be!

October's Stack delivery was Dirty Furniture, a magazine that will run for just six issues, each one focusing on a different piece of furniture. Previous issues were about the couch and the table, this issue was about the toilet, and future issues will be based on the closet, the telephone and the bed.

When I opened up my Stack envelope to reveal a magazine about toilets I was pretty sceptical that it was going to be a good read, but it turned out to be a great one, using toilets as the starting point for a wide range of articles. An analysis of the appeal of scatological humour, an article about gender neutral bathrooms and a history of Japanese high-tech toilets sit alongside interviews with an engineer who builds sewers, an archaeologist who specialises in faeces and a dairy farmer who uses his cows' dung to provide both bio-gas fuel and building materials. It was smart, funny and interesting. I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Would I buy it again? No, but only because I think there's a limit to my interest in furniture design. I would recommend it to all designers. I love the concept of a magazine with a planned end-date and can definitely understand the desire to have the complete set.

Stack: September

This month's Stack is Ladybeard, (this one, not this one), a feminist magazine with themed issues. This issue is focused on the mind.

To be honest, I held off on starting this for a while. It's a massive magazine and the very first article, 'Losing My Mind', is a series of short personal reflections about mental breakdowns. The thought of ploughing through page after page of other people's mental health problems seemed like more a challenge than I wanted right now. In the end I did overcome my trepidation and sit down with it, and I was glad I did. It wasn't heavy-going at all – the articles are relatively short, (I could have done with some of them being longer), and wildly varied. There is some serious content, (institutional racism in mental health treatment, eating disorders, the use of psychiatry for political ends), but there's plenty of cheerful oddities mixed in as well, (art, transhumanism, twins, the history of emotions, LSD). The writing's good, the design is great, the content is interesting. It's just a shame it weighs so much – it was a nightmare to carry around for a week!

Would I buy it again? Maybe? It seems to be priced at £6.50, which is shockingly low considering how big and beautiful it is. I guess it would probably all depend on the theme.

Stack: August

(I skipped July! I'll write something for it when I have more time.)

Judging by this cover design, what would you say this magazine is about? Boats? Travel? Exploration? You're wrong. It's about coffee. It's a surprisingly thick magazine about coffee.

August's Stack is Drift, each issue of which focuses on a different city and the coffee culture there. This issue is set in Stockholm. I made fun of this magazine when I first opened it up. It's so thick and the idea that this weighty tome was just about coffee in Stockholm seemed ridiculous to me. But then I started reading it and it was really fun.

Part of it is just that I love hearing about other people's niche interests. But part of it is that this magazine uses coffee as a starting point to talk about a place. There are interviews with baristas, cafe owners and coffee roasters, but there are also articles delving into topics such as the recent influx of refugees into Sweden, Swedish design, parental leave and the generational divide. Coffee acts as the connection between all of this, a common thread that the writers continually returns to. It's weird and interesting and not something I'd ever buy myself – everything I want from Stack deliveries.

Would I buy it again? I am not enough of a coffee connoisseur to buy this again, but I'm glad I had the chance to read it!

Stack: June

June's Stack delivery isn't a magazine; it's Amuseum! Hilarious.

I am slightly at a loss as to how to describe this one, (this is starting to feel like a running theme with this year's selection), but I suppose that a museum isn't a bad comparison. It's a selection of essays and articles that are based around objects: lightbulbs; IKEA bags; Vitsœ furniture; Kibbo Kift totems. It's energetic and odd – bouncing from one subject to the next without anything to connect them. The letter from Stack that accompanied it described it as "ideal toilet reading", which is very accurate. You can drop in and out easily, the writing is very accessible, and you'll probably learn something along the way.

Somehow I feel like I'm damning it with faint praise though. While I liked it, I did not love it, and I think the main problem was that it felt very lightweight after last month's New Philosopher. Had it arrived after January's delivery of The Lifted Brow I might have enjoyed it a lot more.

Would I buy it again? Maybe? Not as a regular thing, but maybe if there was an issue with something particularly interesting in?

Stack: May

I loved this month's delivery! It was a magazine called New Philosopher, which is released quarterly with each issue focused on a different topic. This issue is about education, but previous issues have included health, travel, technology, fame and work to name just a few. There's no overarching thesis to an issue – just different writers exploring the topic, interspersed with quotes and excerpts from the works of famous philosophers and theorists.

If I had to make a complaint it would be that the writing is fairly shallow; two or three pages just don't provide enough space to really dig deeply into a topic. I don't really think that's the aim of New Philosopher though. It feels more like it's offering food for thought, not making any pronouncements on its subjects. Overall it was such a fun, accessible read and it left me wanting more!

Would I buy it again? Yes!

Stack: April

April's Stack delivery was a bit of a struggle for me. The magazing was PYLOT, which is "a bi-annual, all-analogue, fashion and photography magazine". This statement actualy comes from their website though, the magazine itself doesn't really tell you what it's about. When asked what I was reading my description was "a fashion magazine for people who want you to know that they're too cool for fashion", a description that I stand by.

The mixture of fashion, art and photography is interesting – it includes interviews with cosmetics company founder Bobbi Brown and photographer Arthur Tress – and it has a policy of not digitally retouching models. Still, it all comes across as very considered and manufactured rather than conveying any real enthusiasm for its subject matter. Also all of the clothes are hideous, but I don't really read high-end fashion magazines so maybe that's normal.

Would I buy it again? No. It's not smart enough to be interesting and the clothes aren't pretty enough for someone with no interest in fashion.

Stack: March

This is more like it! After a weak start Stack has now delivered The Gourmand, which was excellent

Stack held its first award ceremony in December and they actually awarded The Gourmand "Magazing of the Year" so it comes well-recommended! It's a gorgeous item – really hefty with great colour photography and thick, glossy paper. According to The Gourmand's website it's printed by specialist art book printers and I can believe it.

And the contents are fun. The articles cover all sorts of topics related, even if only tangentially, to food. Amongst other things there's a history of Weight Watchers, jewellery inspired by fruit and vegetables, an article about Alexandre Dumas's cookbook and an interview with a DJ-turned-sake brewer. At the end of the magazine are recipes related to the articles, so you can read about Vincent Price's dinner parties and then flick to the back for his recipe for stuffed frankfurters. The quality of the writing does let it down in a couple of places, (the Weight Watchers article is a particularly great example of why you souldn't use five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do), but overall this was so much fun to read. 

Would I buy it again? Yes, I think I might. It's expensive – £12 an issue – but it's such a high-quality product that I don't really begrudge the price tag.

Stack: February

February's Stack delivery was a double-whammy: Print Isn't Dead and Posterzine, both from People of Print and both about artist Anthony Burrill!
 

It would be fairer to say that Burrill is more of a starting point for this issue of Print Isn't Dead. This magazine is intended as a tribute to printing and this issue has a big focus on letterpress printing, which Burrill is known for. It starts off with Burrill writing short pieces about printers he's worked with and artists he admires, and then moves on to recommendations from those people. It's a good way to explore the subject.

It's also beautifully designed. Whereas The Lifted Brow felt overwhelming every time I opened it up, Print Isn't Dead was clean. I always knew where I was supposed to be looking on the page. The text was clear and the images had room to breathe. It was easy to dip in and out of and I really enjoyed reading it.

Posterzine is, as I suppose its name suggests, a poster-magazine. It's an A1 sheet of paper and it can be unfolded to show a poster on one side. The other side has text that is read in order as you unfold it. It's a pretty neat idea and the issue that I have is a lovely object. It's printed with just two colours, blue and pink, and is a quick, fun read. It apparently costs £5.99 though, which is pretty steep if you're not going to display it as a poster.

Would I buy it again? Maybe the magazine. I liked it, but it's also £10. I could buy a whole book for that!

Stack: January

New year, new Stack subscription!

January opened with The Lifted Brow, "a quarterly attack journal from Australia and the world". Looking back through my 2014 Stack entries, I can't find any magazines that I really disliked. There were quite a few about subjects I had no interest in, and a couple that were mediocre, but nothing I really had any trouble reading. The Lifted Brow has now changed that! I found it both boring and pretentious, and spent the last three weeks carrying it around, opening it, reading one page, and then abandoning it in irritation.

Its focus seems to be contemporary art and it features a mixture of essays, photographs, art, comics and poetry. I can't really say much beyond that though. I actually feel like I can't review this magazine as I read so little of it. I can say that it is the first magazine I've received through Stack that I've seen someone else reading though! My fellow commuter seemed engrossed in it so I can confidently say it appeals to someone.

Would I buy it again? No. This is one I never want to see again.

Stack: December

Stack ended on a high note for me with two magazines, both of which I enjoyed and both of which I would buy again!

Works That Work
This was a bit of a puzzle when I opened up the envelope it arrived in: a grey cover, that on closer inspection was a picture of racks of fish hanging outside in the snow. I think I'd describe Works That Work as a design magazine, but I'd feel like I was underselling it as I did. It's really a testament to human ingenuity and problem-solving, although I guess that's not really a section in most shops.

This issue is based around extreme environments – deserts, war zones, the Arctic – and the things that people have built in them: homemade guns and stoves made from scrap during the siege of Sarajevo; a temporary city of 30 million people for a Hindu festival; a rocket intended for Mars built by amateurs in their spare time. It's fascinating, weird, sad and delightful all at once.

Would I buy it again? Yes, despite its outrageous cover price of £13.

Belleville Park Pages
Belleville Park Pages is a great idea. It's a tiny thing, made from a single sheet of A3 paper folded four times, and it contains a mixture of poetry and prose by new writers (there are 12 pieces in this issue). I liked the idea of Belleville Park Pages so much I wanted to like everything in it. I didn't, but I liked some enough to look up the authors online, which seems like the point of this magazine.

Would I buy it again? Yes. This is the most straightforward answer I have ever had to this question.

Stack: November

I get quite excited about my Stack deliveries so the delay on this month's delivery built up my expectations to unreasonable heights. In the end, this month's Stack, huck, was alright. Its strapline is "radical culture" and its contents are a mixture of culture, especially music, and left-wing politics. It's an easy read – I read it from cover to cover on my way to work over a couple of days – and it was enjoyable, but it left me thinking of this song:



huck is a counterculture magazine that wants me to think corporate rock is for suckers, but comes with a £30 voucher for a shop where I can buy a £201 jacket. And I'm not sure it has any sense of irony about that.

Would I buy it again? I honestly don't know. I enjoyed it, I just thought it lacked self-awareness. Maybe if there was a particularly compelling cover story?

Stack: October

This month's Stack was an interesting experience: two magazines, one of which I enjoyed more than the other, but in answering the question "would I buy it again" I realised that I'm more likely to pick up the one I liked less in future.

hello mr.
hello mr.'s strapline is "about men who date men". I love a subtitle that explains exactly what you're getting and hello mr. is perfectly encapsulated by its subtitle. It's a collection of writings – personal essays, interviews, poems, etc. – by gay men, and while sexuality is a huge part of the content, it can also be entirely incidental to the experiences being described, for example, "Scarred" and "Libra with Cancer" are both about dealing with serious illness at a young age. The writing styles and topics are hugely varied, (understandably, as the authors' main point of commonality is their sexuality), and it's beautifully designed and well-edited. Overall, it's a lovely product, although I'm keenly aware that I'm not the right demographic for it.

Would I buy it again? I really enjoyed reading hello mr., but ultimately I'm not the intended audience for this magazine and I felt like a tourist reading it. I'm not going to buy it again, but I hope it does well.

Root + Bone
Root + Bone is a free London-based food magazine, the content of which is a mixture of restaurant reviews, recipes and articles about food, cooking and eating. At its best the writing was enthusiastic and genuine, if unpolished, but too often it veered into a laddishness that irritated me. It might have been a problem with this particular issue, which focused on unconventional ingredients and methods of cooking and at times gave me the distinct impression the writers wanted me to know just how "crazy" they were. That said, the restaurant reviews made me want to try a number of new places and some of the recipes look amazing. I really wanted to like this, but overall I found it frustratingly hit and miss.

Would I buy it again? Because it's free I'd probably pick it up again for the restaurant reviews and the recipes despite not particularly enjoying its editorial style.

Stack: September

September's Stack delivery is boat, a travel magazine. Each issue of boat focuses exclusively on a single city and this issue is about Los Angeles. Of course, this is Stack so boat isn't a typical travel magazine. There's no guide to the best places to eat or the top 10 attractions to visit. Instead, boat is a series of articles by, and interviews with, residents of Los Angeles in which they ruminate on aspects of life in the city.

And it was a great read. It needed some better copy-editing, but the actual articles were compelling and gave a great sense of L.A. as a city. I previously had no interest in going to L.A., but boat made me want to visit so that seems like a solid endorsement for a travel magazine.

Would I buy it again? Yes, if there was an issue on a city I was going to. I actually looked to see if they had a past issue on Berlin as I might be there next month, but sadly they've not gone there yet.

Stack: August

It's taken me a while to sit down and write something about IdN, this month's Stack delivery. Usually I try and read about 75% of the magazine before I post something, but with IdN every time I open it I get completely overwhelmed, flick through it for a bit and then close it without making any progress.

It's a design magazine, although compared to Printed Pages it's such a different beast that it seems strange to put them in the same category. IdN is a blur of product design, street art, graphic design, and installations; images fill the pages, swamping the tiny paragraphs of tiny text. As a reading experience it's pretty terrible, but as a design showcase it's great.

My favourite part of IdN is that it also showcases animation. Apparently it used to come with a DVD, but this material has now moved online and is accessed with a password provided by the magazine. This issue's theme is Geometry in Motion Graphics Design and there's a lot of fantastic videos to watch, although my favourite is a music video that can also be seen here.

Would I buy it again? No. But I recommend it as a source of inspiration to designers and animators everywhere.

Stack: July

This month's Stack is Intern, the magazine by interns for interns!

In all seriousness, this is actually pretty good. There's been a lot of focus in the US and the UK recently on unpaid internships and their value to the individual and the economy. Intern explores that debate, interviewing people in the creative industries about internships. There's a variety of voices in this issue: young people in internships; creative professionals who have done internships; creative professionals strongly opposed to unpaid interns. Interestingly, it's not just focused on social debate; the magazine also includes photography, fiction and poetry, making it a creative outlet as well as a platform for political/social discussion.

Overall, it was an engaging read. It's a very polite magazine though; there are no polemics about social injustice to be found here, just well-articulated thoughts about how things could be improved. I'm not sure if you really start a labour movement that way, but I don't think Intern is looking to mobilise anyone so much as make them think.

Would I buy it again? This is yet another that I'd buy for someone else, but not for myself. If I had a younger friend or relative who had just graduated and was looking for or already in an internship it might be something I'd want to share with them.

Stack: June

This month's Stack delivery was the dual-language magazine Perdiz. Perdiz is about happiness, or more accurately, some of the things that make some people happy: karaoke, drugs, shoelaces, photography and storm-chasing are some of the things covered by this issue alone.

Each Stack delivery arrives with a letter from the founder of Stack that introduces the magazine and tells you how great it is. I haven't really felt the need to mention them until now when this month's letter described Perdiz's content as "slightly unhinged", which is a pretty accurate summary of how I felt reading it. It skips between wildly disparate subjects with manic glee, perfectly capturing the fine line between enthusiast and obsessive. It even looks pretty strange. Check out the exposed spine:

All text is in both English and Spanish, with Spanish being the first language of the Perdiz staff. The occasionally clunky English translations just add to the general sense of delightful oddness. The whole experience was endearingly weird. Perdiz is definitely something very different.

Would I buy it again? It's quite expensive, so probably not. That said, I found myself thinking about it quite a bit afterwards. I mean, I learnt that I tie my shoes in the same way as the world's foremost expert on shoelaces! (We both favour the Over Under style of lacing, in case you wondered.) That made me pretty happy actually...

Stack: May

I've been carrying this month's Stack around for two weeks, reading it from cover to cover and wondering what on earth I'm going to write about it. This month's delivery is Offscreen, "a print magazine about the people behind bits and pixels". Broadly speaking, it looks at people who have founded or are running technology businesses, and that covers people from the CEO of moo.com, which prints business cards, to the founder of Kickboard, a program to help schools track students' progress. The contents are a series of interviews, some pages long and some only a few paragraphs long, and this issue profiles at least 25 people.

I've been struggling with what to say about it because I found myself a bit ambivalent about Offscreen. It's fascinating – reading it from cover to cover wasn't a chore by any means – but it also feels so aspirational that I kept thinking it was trying to sell me something. This is despite the fact that it has no traditional adverts! (Companies can sponsor Offscreen, and if they do they get a page in the sponsors section of the magazine. All the sponsor pages are black with white text so it's very clear that they're separate from the rest of the magazine and I really enjoyed this clear distinction of content and advertising.) There's obviously a lot of success in the interviews, but there's a lot of emphasis on happiness and personal fulfilment too. There's a repeating narrative about founding and running a successful business that also gives something back to the world or changes it for the better in some way and helps you grow as a person. As well as photographs of their subjects at work, the longer articles also include photographs of their subjects relaxing: gardening, cycling through the streets of Portland, sharing a coffee with laughing co-workers.

Aspiring to start a personally-fulfilling business is a great thing, but I doubt it's as easy as these profiles make it sound. Offscreen is not a how-to guide for launching a business or developing a new technology, but if you want to do those things you'll find a lot of inspiration in its pages – stories of people who did those things and succeeded. If you don't, you might find its evangelical passion a bit offputting. It's an interesting magazine, but I found myself wondering who its audience is, who reads it regularly. Two weeks later I'd still love to know.

Would I buy it again? I don't think so, but I'm not really sure. It's another one that I might buy for somebody else – maybe if any of my programmer friends ever launch their own start-up I'll send them a copy!

Stack: April

This month's Stack was another double whammy: Printed Pages and Your Days Are Numbered.

Printed Pages
Printed Pages is the print spin-off of online magazine It's Nice That. It is indeed nice. Its tagline is "championing creativity across the art and design world" and its scope is just as broad as that suggests. This issue includes an interview with Jon Link and Mick Bunnage of Modern Toss, a conversation between Tavi Gevinson and Minna Gilligan of Rookie, photographs by Bruno Drummond and Gemma Tickle, and profiles of people who work in various galleries and museums across London.

It's all very pleasant, with high production values and people talking about how great it is making things. It also felt a little bland, although some of my indifference might have stemmed from comparing this to the other magazine in April's delivery...

Would I buy it again? Probably not. It was an enjoyable read on the Tube, but it didn't grab my attention.

Your Days Are Numbered
Printed Pages looks just a little too staid and earnest alongside Your Days Are Numbered. This slim, free magazine about comics is published four times a year and, based on the strength of this issue, it's bursting with energy and irreverence. It's a mixture of short interviews and even shorter reviews, and the team behind it have had loads of fun with the layouts, which obviously incorporate lots of illustrations. It's clearly going to be a drain on my bank balance though, I have eight books to add to my wish list as a result of reading this magazine.

Would I buy it again? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, although it's free so this would actually be unnecessary. You can supposedly pay to have a year's worth of issues delivered to your house - which I was going to do! - but there's nothing in their online shop. Get it together, guys, I would give you some money if I could.

Stack: March

This month's delivery – The Ride Journal – was the kind of thing I was expecting from Stack: a really compelling magazine that I would not have bought for myself because it's about a subject I have no interest in. Ostensibly this is a cycling magazine and as I'm the sort of nervous cyclist who can't take her hands of the handlebars I wouldn't have bought a cycling magazine in a hundred years. But The Ride Journal isn't here to tell you what bike to buy, instead its contributors write short pieces about their personal relationship to cycling. There are articles about competing in races and designing bikes, about people met while cycling and strange places cycled across. There's a brilliant pair of articles about bicycle theft called “Thief” and “Taken”. There's a man who writes about the bike rides he made following the death of his infant son and a woman who writes about abandoning cycling as a teenager after a bike ride led her to discover her mother's infidelity. There's a series of photos showing a morning commute through London and another one showing a muddy, cross-country race in Belgium. It's about cycling, whatever that means to its readers and writers.

It looks stunning too; most articles are accompanied by gorgeous illustrations in a huge range of styles. It's even heftier than and it breaks up its uncoated pages with some glossy photographic sections such as the Belgian race photographs. It's beautiful and interesting and I'm really pleased to have received a copy.

Would I buy it again? Not for myself, but I would definitely get this as a gift for a keen cyclist.

Stack: February

James's first comment when I opened February's Stack was, “That's not a magazine; that's a book.”, which will tell you what a chunky beast VNA, this month's magazine, is. It's smaller than A4, but 162 lovely, heavy, matt pages. And what's it about? “Street art, graffiti, illustration and art culture”. I am delighted with this month's selection!
 

VNA profiles a series of artists – each article is obviously accompanied by extensive photographs of the artists' work – with a concluding section of photographic profiles of specific cities, (in this issue its London, Hong Kong and Łódź). It's beautiful, interesting and exactly up my street; I read it from cover to cover over the last week.

Would I buy it again? Absolutely. And I'll be checking out exhibitions by Chloe Early and Nick Sheehy later this year!