Art & DesignCulture

Surprise indie magazines gift from Stack

December 16, 2016

Stack is an independent magazine subscription service with a twist. Every month a new magazine is delivered to your doorstep. It’s wrapped and you have no idea what it’s going to be…

Whether it’s experimenting with the print medium, quirky design or a thought-provoking insight of the world, Stack offers a new route into a particular subject. From food to philosophy, coffee to feminism, Stack looks for the voices and makers of magazines off the beaten track.

This Christmas Stack are promoting special offers. For just £20, three bespoke, new magazines will be delivered to your chosen person. If you know someone you really want to treat, the £40 gift bundle offers a six-month taster of handpicked magazines. A thoughtfulness comes with the continuity of a subscription gift, which will carry into the months of 2017.

Independent magazines from Stack are not available in the newsagent; magazines come at a discounted price and are sent out to you before anyone else. The difficult process of choosing a magazine for a friend has already been done thanks to Stack.

For the arty friend or graphic design geek, Print Isn’t Dead celebrates innovation in design and is a statement for what print is capable of. Each issue plays with the baseline grid, spot colours and typefaces.

In an age where technology is predominantly our main way of communicating and interacting with the world, print magazines offer an insight to a voice which isn’t in the mainstream.

Founder of Stack, Steve Watson says,

‘I think magazines make great gifts because they create time in your life. You can easily lose entire evenings to watching TV and scrolling through Facebook, but when you sit down and devote an hour to a magazine it feels like a much more deliberate use of time. Sort of like reading a book, but with extra pictures, headlines and pull quotes to make the whole thing a bit easier.’

Stack vary the order of their magazines so there is a balance of image-led content and magazines which channel longer journalism pieces. For example, this year Stack sent out Pylot, a visual magazine that champions analogue fashion photography. The magazine works on a no photoshopping rule. Stack also send out reportage magazines such as Delayed Gratification, ‘a beautiful quarterly that revisits stories after the dust has settled and cuts out the white noise of the 24-hour news cycle’.

Each magazine is appealing. It might not be something you were brave enough to pick up and read; it’s normally something you would never discover on your own. In Stack’s Christmas newsletter, they listed helpful gift ideas on which magazine would suit a reader. Stack paired Pylot magazine with ‘The Weekend Reader’ and the cultural journal of human stories Berlin Quarterly with ‘The Night Owl’ reader.

I spoke to Steve Watson about what he was looking forward to featuring in the new year. He said, ‘Our January delivery is going to be a really forward-thinking magazine that will challenge a lot of readers. I’m excited and nervous about that in equal measure!’

For an idea on what magazines went out to readers this year, look at Stack’s magazine list. Make sure you order your magazine subscription gift here. £20 for three unique copies couldn’t be a better deal.

© Stack Magazines

 

Feature image: © freestocks.org / Original Via Pexels.com

You may also like