magCulture Live, London 2023
magCulture Live London is back! Our annual event showcasing the best creative editorial projects, with speakers from across the magazine spectrum sharing their work and inspiring our audience, returns on 16 November.
Every year the event features a series of talks from the people behind the most innovative magazines. Each will provide their own unique insight into the role of the magazine in contemporary culture, this year focusing on the variety of formats available to the magazine maker—emphasising differences in scale, shape and periodicity. We’ll also be taking a quick look back through the last 10 years of magCulture Live.
Our complete line-up is now confirmed—see below. Tickets are limited and selling fast. Book yours now!
This event has already taken place
This special 10th anniversary edition of magCulture Live, London, takes place at a new venue, the Vitsoe shop in Marylebone. We’ve worked with Vitsoe since our 2014 Reading Room during the London Design Festival, and use their 606 shelving, 620 chairs and 621 tables in our London shop. We also collaborate annually with their New York team during the NY edition of magCulture Live.
Their central London shop features a brutalist double-height open space that will be converted into a live venue for magCulture Live. The event opens at 1pm and runs through to 5pm, when everyone’s welcome to stick around for a beer and chat.
We look forward to welcoming you to this year’s event to celebrate both creative magazine-making and the 100+ speakers who have graced the magCulture Live platform over the last 10 years. We hope you’ll join us live in London, but are also offering livestream tickets for those further away. All ticket holders will have free access to a video of the talks after the event.
Tickets cost £100 inclusive of VAT and fees, or £75 for students (please book using your university email). Group rates are avsilable for bookings of over five people—please email events@magCulture.com
magCulture Live, London 2023
Thursday November 16, 1–5pm
Vitsoe, 21 Marylebone Lane
London W1U 2NG
Map
This event has already taken place
Meet the speakers
Debra Bishop
The New York Times Kids
Debra spoke about her design direction of The New York Times for Kids at our magCulture Live New York earlier this year, and we’re thrilled to be bringing her over to London to reprise her talk. Published in a broadsheet format, the Kids section is packed with brilliant illustration, colourful typography and clever art direction, confounding the assumption that today’s kids can’t enjoy print.
Debra has previously worked for many of New York’s major titles including Rolling Stone and Martha Stewart Kids.
Neville Brody
Neville made his name with the bold design direction of The Face, Arena and City Limits in the 1980’s. He continues to run his own design studio from London, where he has combined work for major businesses including Channel 4, Samsung and Coca Cola with passionate cheerleading for visual design—running the Royal College of Art’s Visual Communications MA, leading D&AD and setting up the Anti-Design Festival.
His recent book, ‘The Graphic Language of Neville Brody Volume 3’ provides a stunning overview of his last 30 years, and links his early editorial work to the contemporary output of his studio. It is also a remarkable piece of editorial design in its own right.
Maya Moumne
Journal Safar and Al Hayya
Maya is a graphic designer by trade, currently based between Beirut and Montreal. She is the co-founder of Studio Safar, Journal Safar, and Al Hayya magazine, of which she is also the editor-in-chief.
Al Hayya reports on the work, interests and strife of woman in the context of Southwest Asia and North Africa. Journal Safar celebrates visual culture from the same parts of the world, questioning the western-orientated history of graphic design. Both combine English and Arabic languages and traditions, using the print format to great effect by running the two languages in their two different directions.
Charles Baker
The Fence
‘Charles Baker is the editor of The Fence’ is all Charles would tell us, but we’re thrilled he’s joining us. His magazine is a rare indie current affairs mag, offering a mix of London-orientated satire, exposé and fiction in a smart, black and red, illustrated, package.
Oyinkansola Dada
Dada magazine
Oyinkansola Dada is the Lagos-born, London-based founder of Dada Gallery and Dada magazine. The gallery's mission is to introduce the most exciting contemporary Black artists to international audiences. In October 2022, she launched Dada magazine, an art magazine founded on the ethos of Dada Gallery, targeted at the new generation of Black artists and art enthusiasts.
Owen and Ollie
The Paper
One of our favourite launches of 2023, the first issue of The Paper arrived at an almost ridiculously ambitious physical scale: 126 chaotically designed A3-ish pages packed with stories from the team’s Welsh homeland. It’s a great example of how personality and wit can shine through from printed pages.
‘We like stories about endless train journeys, about working in chip shops, about playing Football Manager, about having sex with someone you hate, about trying to get a doctor’s appointment. All this stuff is kind of normal, but you don’t really get to read about it in magazines. That’s it, maybe? The absurdity of the everyday.’
Jermaine Gallacher
Ton
Jermaine is an interior designer and dealer whose London showroom has become a hotspot for hiring, acquiring, and admiring distinctive designs and objets d’art. Last year, he joined Vogue as a columnist and launched Ton magazine, where he is editor-in-chief, a magazine serving as a love letter to underground and undiscovered design talents.
Linda Nubling
Gurlz with Curlz
Linda’s lifestyle indie Gurlz with Curlz has shared the experiences of Black women and Black culture in German-speaking countries since 2017. This year she launches the first English/German bilingual edition of her biannual magazines. She’ll be explaining the publication’s origins and introducing the new issue.
Sebastian Clark
isolarii
Sebastian Clark is the founder of isolarii, a series of books released via subscription. The name is a revival of the ‘island books’ that emerged in Venice at the start of the Renaissance. Each tiny volume—they measure 70 x 110mm, and there have been nine to date—contains a single story, a ready-to-hand island; together, a growing archipelago of cultural exchange.
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