Your complete guide to magCulture Live New York 2023
We’re packing our bags and checking our ESTA’s ahead of flying to New York, where we have several days of events leading up to the main one, magCulture Live, on Sunday July 9.
Final preps are under way: magazines have already been shipped for our MagMagMag pop-up; final speaker briefings continue; the last details are being finalised.
We hope our presence in New York will bring the city’s magazine makers a reason to hang out together and meet fellow magazine lovers. Swing by the MagMagMag pop-up and say hi! We’re also hosting a launch party next Thursday evening—if you publish a magazine get in touch and we’ll add you to the guest list: danielle@magCulture.com
This post gives a chronological overview of the week’s schedule, and will be updated regularly over the coming days. All but one of the events will be accessible online as well as live in person.
This event has already taken place
Watch the video of the day
MagMagMag pop-up shop
We’re continuing our annual collaboration with Vitsoe, the manufacturers of the shelves and furniture used in our London Shop. The pop-up will echo the design of our shop and be packed with highlights from our selection of international magazines—check the list at the end of this post.
The magCulture team will be based here in the run-up to magCulture Live—come and say hello!
MagMagMag will open from Wednesday July 5 until Saturday July 8, 10am–6pm
Vitsoe, 17 W 8th St, New York, NY 10011
Map
magCulture Live New York 2023
Sunday July 9, 1–5pm
The big one! Our annual day of talks take place on Sunday July 9, from 1–5pm. As well as guest speakers, visit our pop-up shop on site, meet our sponsors, and pick up your goodie bag.
Wix Playground, 100 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014
Map
The theme for the day is ‘Format’, highlighting the many variable factors in magazine production. What size are the pages? What shape are the pages? How often is it published? How long will it be published for? The choices available to the magazine maker today are more flexible than ever. Our speakers will be highlighting this as they present their work.
Running order for the day
13:00 Jeremy Leslie, intro
13:15 Matt Willey & Dan Crowe, Inque
14:00 Chloe Scheffe, Here & Backstage Talks
14:30 John Sunyer and Anna Jay, Courier
15:00 Break
15:15 Indie session:
Whitney Mallet, Whitney Review of New Writing
Echo Wu, 1413
Emmanuel Olunkwa, Pin-Up
Gutes Guterman, Byline
Tanya Bush, Cake Zine
16:15 Debra Bishop, New York Times Kids
Livestream
If you can’t make it to the live event, you can join us online to watch a livestream of the full session. Tickets via the same Eventbrite link.
International timings:
United Kingdom: 6–11pm
Europe: 5–10pm
West coast US: 10am–2pm
Tickets
Live and Livestream tickets are $80, and $50 for students (please bring proof of student/recent graduate status on the day). All ticketholders will have future access to the video recording of the event.
For group rates please email events@magCulture.com
Meet our speakers:
Debra Bishop,
The New York Times Kids
Debra is a designer and art director who has worked for many of New York’s biggest magazines including Rolling Stone and Martha Stewart Kids. For the past six years she has been design director of The New York Times Kids, and she will sharing the origins and success of this brilliantly illustrated and designed broadsheet newspaper for children.
Debra is also part of the New York Times Magazine team that recently won Design Team of the Year at the Art Director’s Club Awards.
Matt Willey and Dan Crowe,
Inque
Matt Willey, Pentagram New York partner, and Dan Crowe have worked on numerous magazine projects together, including Zembla and Port. Their latest collaboration is the large format literary/art magazine Inque, an ambitious annual publication with a pre-planned end at issue ten. Packed with big-name contributors—writers, artists and photographers—it has already won multiple awards.
The pair will be talking about Inque’s origins and introduce for the first time the soon-to-be-released second issue.
John Sunyer and Anna Jay,
Courier
British media company Courier covers modern business across print, email and social. The Courier magazine has just marked its 50th issue with its biggest refresh since launch. It has stayed true to its founding ideas and beliefs—focusing on people living and working on their own terms. Only now it has reimagined how it represents success in the modern economy across art and design, food and drink, entrepreneurship and fashion, with an evolution in its photography and a bespoke approach to editorial and design, with sticker sheets, pull-out posters, interactive illustrations, longform features and more.
Editor John Sunyer and Photography director Anna Jay will talk about the process of reimagining a magazine from scratch.
Chloe Scheffe,
Here, Backstage Talks, etc
Chloe is a bright young star of editorial design, known for her typographic playfulness, and one half of Scheffe Shields, the independent practice she runs with Natalie Shields. Previously she was the art director at Here Magazine (Away) and a designer at The New York Times Magazine, and has freelanced for Interview, GQ, HommeGirls, Wired, and Backstage Talks, among others. In 2019, she was named a Young Gun by the One Club for Creativity. She is currently based in Seattle.
Gutes Guterman,
Byline
Gutes is an NYC-based cat mom, media-maven and artist who thinks of words as material and media as medium. Having previously co-published cult NY magazine The Drunken Canal, Gutes has just returned to the fray with new online platform Byline. She’ll be discussing its print-adjacent monthly schedule, and the differences betwen publishing in print and digital formats.
Echo Wu,
1413 Magazine
Founded in 2015 by graphic designers Echo Wu and Lisa Zeng, 1413 Magazine is a bilingual platform showcasing Chinese culture. Aptly described as ‘A Tickle Fight with Chinese Culture,’ the magazine offers a unique glimpse of contemporary China, filtered through a nostalgia for 90’s visual culture and a healthy dose of humour. It’s unlike anything else out there at present.
Echo is a graphic designer from Yan’an, China, living in New York. As well as co-founding 1413 Magazine, she works at the creative agency Food.
Tanya Bush
Cake Zine
Tanya is co-founder of Cake Zine, an independent, biannual print publication exploring society through sweets. Founded in 2021, the literary magazine publishes essays, illustrations, reported features, recipes, and fiction in conversation with an irreverent culinary theme and with a smart, bookish design that confounds expectations of the word ‘zine’. She’ll be discussing the creation of Cake Zine and the magazine as a social object.
Whitney Mallett
The Whitney Review of Books
Whitney is founding editor of The Whitney Review of New Writing, a smart new literary biannual designed to fill the demand for briefer book reviews from a broader range of sources. She’s also co-editor of Barbie Dreamhouse: An Architectural Survey and holds editorial positions at PIN–UP, Editorial Magazine, and Gayletter.
Stay at our official hotel partner Ace Hotel New York
visiting New York for magCulture Live? Use code WELOVEMAGS and save 20% from June 23-July 15
Book here
With thanks to our partners for their support:
MagMagMag free events
Alongside the pop-up, we’re organising three informal, free events. Please sign up on Eventbrite to reserve your place. Tickets are very limited.
Wednesday July 5, 6-8pm
Meet at Vitsoe
Cooper Union’s Herb Lubalin Study Center is a treasure-filled archive of graphic design ephemera spanning 125 years and four continents. Join the Center’s curator Alexander Tochilovsky for a special presentation for magCulture of a selection of magazines from the archive. The event will give participants a rare opportunity to see and handle the objects and to hear the often hidden stories behind them.
This event has already taken place.
Tickets are free but please reserve your place on Eventbrite
This event will not be available online
Thursday July 6, 1-2pm
Vitsoe
Guests Kim Hastreiter and Milah Libin will be in conversation with Jeremy Leslie. Kim was co-founder in 1984 of legendary New York magazine Paper, and is a New York icon, describing herself as Cultural Troublemaker/ Original Gangster/ People Collector/ Idea machine/ Enthusiast. Milah is from the new generation of independent publishers, producing art mag Dizzy and kid’s mag Mishou. The two will talk about the projects and how they have supported each other.
This event has already taken place.
Watch the Instagram Live video.
Friday July 6, 1-2pm
Vitsoe
Guests Anna Jay and Roxanne Behr will be in conversation with Jeremy Leslie. Anna is Photography director at Courier magazine and was previously art director at Refinery29. Roxanne has worked as Photo editor at New York magazine, and is now Global creative director at GQ. The discussion will focus on commissioning and collaborating with photographers, the influence of social media, and the challenge of AI.
This event has already happened.
Watch the Instagram Live video
Magazines available at our MagMagMag pop-up shop include:
Butt
Chutney
Drift
Ecoes
Eleven
Fence
Flaneur
Gentlewoman
Girls Like Us
Grub Street Journal
Happy Reader
IFLA Special
Journal du Thé
Mildew #1
Mishou
Modernist #47
Mother Tongue
Motor Dance Journal
Noble Rot #32
Open Sesame
Paperboy
Parklife
Pin-Up
Pleasant Place #2
Printing Fashion
Quilo
Real Review #14
Revue Faire #45
Rubbish FAMzine
Sandwich
Scenic Views
Solimiya #2
Superstore Wilderness
The Paper #1
Ton #1
Vestoj