John Coe, Pressing Matters
John Coe runs Pressing Matters, the quarterly magazine about printmaking and printmakers. He shares his magazine’s origins and its success—built on people’s desire to ‘step away from their computers and devices’—as issue 26 is published.
What are you doing this Monday morning?
Today I’m catching up on magazine admin after a few days out of the studio last week—a couple of photoshoots in the South West area and a print studio and paper mill visit, all for our October edition. As we have not long launched issue 27, the job list is made up largely of promotions for that edition, but also, I’m reaching out to artists and contributors for our winter issue too this week. My commute is super short, only a few steps from our back door to our garden studio—an old stone bothy that we’ve fixed up and serves as our workspace and sometimes print studio.
Describe your work environment
The space we work in looks out onto our garden, it’s slightly lower than the lawn, so at this time of the year the view out of the window is of summer flowers. We have a couple of Macs that work on to produce the magazine and lots of copies of the magazines, packing materials and so on. A massive shelving unit houses a collection of design books and magazines that I have collected over the years. I have a large printing press, drawers with art materials and lots of paper that I use in my print experiments.
Which magazine do you first remember?
Probably The Beano was the first magazine I bought myself and was seriously into —I was comics mad as a kid and, to be honest, I’ve graduated slightly to graphic novels, but my love of illustration and storytelling is still there.
Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine?
I was a massive fan of Smith Journal which sadly stopped publishing a while back. I love its mix of articles, topics, illustration and photographic. No specific theme or idea for each issue, but it was always interesting and I read it cover to cover. I’m a big fan of Huck, Positive News and Uppercase, so try to pick up copies of these when I see them in a shop—I like to support indie mag shops and gallery bookshops when I can.
Describe Pressing Matters in three words
Approachable Inky Inspiration
Why printmaking? Tell us about your interest in the practice
I first came to printmaking via my first magazine, Boneshaker which was about cycling, but we worked with illustrators to create screenprints to sell online and at bike shows. I designed one myself and had a go at printing it too and I loved the hands-on side of turning a design that had been made on a computer into a tactile print.
Fast forward many years when I’d finished working on Boneshaker, I signed up to a part time course called ‘A Year In Print’, where I got to try a variety of different techniques - my tutor was a photographer and we chatted around the idea of a printmaking magazine and realised there was something in it, so I did my research and started Pressing Matters. I love all types of printmaking—this helps massively when making the magazine, but makes my own printmaking practice a bit scattergun-like. There are printmaking studios and individuals teaching workshops in most towns, so I’d suggest checking those and out and perhaps starting with an Intro To Printmaking style course…
Is printmaking seeing a surge in interest alongside other analogue practices?
I guess that the printmaking techniques are largely set, but there is an increasing interest in sustainable ways of printing—artists sourcing materials that are kind to the earth, such as inks, papers and so on that have been made with that in mind.
Risograph printing seems to be more common and used by small design studios and illustrators, with designers keen to try Letterpress and see they can incorporate the more hand-made look into their designs and artworks. I think the resurgence has something to do with wanting to step away from computers and devices, to pause and find the inherent joy that comes with making something, creating something that didn’t exist before.
Highlight one story from the latest issue that sums up the magazine and its mission
One of the stories from our latest issue that stands out is an interview with Marthe Armitage—at the fine age of 94, she is still creating designs and making lino blocks for wallpaper, which in turn her daughter prints to order for their customers. They have a small team who help to translate these designs into textiles too, so the whole thing is both family-run and innovative too.
The magazine tries to have an approachable feel to it, like you are having a chat with the artist themselves, with their insights hopefully inspiring and educating you in the process. A lot of our stories have a community aspect to them, and we try to vary the techniques we talk about – sharing universal themes via a variety of artists and their experiences.
What advice do you have for anyone planning to launch a magazine?
Go for it…! But be sure to spend plenty of time doing your research. I had the experience of working Boneshaker before this magazine and also worked on a title in Hamburg for a while, so that gave me a good idea of what I’d want to do with my own publication. If you can think about how it would stack up financially too (do you need to sell ads? what does the cover price need to be?) then that’s a massive help. I started with looking at all of the magazines I loved and broke down what made a great magazine in my eyes and I have tried to incorporate those into Pressing Matters, by way of regular features, print challenges, workspace profiles, etc.
What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
Spending time looking through some of the photos and artworks that I have been sent for our October edition. I am a long way off the design stage of the mag’s schedule, but its fun to get a feel for how some of the articles might look and to get excited about the artists and their work that we’ll be featuring. I’m also heading into the print studio in Bristol myself later this week, so catching up with print friends over coffee and pastries is always a highlight too!