From the team behind Little White Lies comes a book that lifts the bonnet on the indie magazine world. Grafik’s Peter Maxwell talked to Rob Longworth about Curious Iconic Craft.
How on earth do you let go of a project that has come to define the early stages of your career? It’s a question that new London-based creative agency Human After All must have asked themselves. Their answer comes in the form of Curious Iconic Craft, a Kickstarter-funded publication that, by the close of their appeal on the 30tJune 2013, had surpassed its £13,000 target by £5,715. The book was pitched as a retrospective for two of the most successful independent magazines of the noughties, the alternative film journal Little White Lies and the culture bible Huck. These haven’t been mothballed, in fact their future is more than secure, but the teams responsible for their creation have gone through a significant change in leadership. Danny Miller, Rob Longworth, Paul Willoughby and Alex Capes, formerly of The Church of London, the outfit in charge of the magazines’ production, have stepped away after eight years working on the titles to form a separate agency with a new focus. Curious Iconic Craft is a chance for them to say goodbye to two the projects largely responsible for introducing their creative skills to the world. Grafik caught up with Rob Longworth, Huck’s (former) creative director, to discuss the book: Peter Maxwell: Congratulations on exceeding your funding target...
Rob Longworth:
Thanks. We had no idea if we were going to hit it or if it would just be a massive flop. The difference with our campaign was that when the time elapsed on the funding, that was when the project itself was finished. We’ve been working simultaneously as the clock has been ticking down. As we’ve met our targets and then passed them we’ve been setting these stretch goals, introducing more pages and different inks for instance. We want to invest every single penny that is pledged into the book, so we’ve had be constantly evolving ideas about how to keep improving it.
PM:
It seems like a particularly challenging model, using the funding method to also drive the production decisions. How did you find the Kickstarter experience?
RL:
Well of course, from the working on the magazines, we’re used to operating with tight deadlines. We wanted to get it done, get it out there and move on to the next project; we didn’t want to have to raise the money first and then get in a meeting room and decide what this book was going to be and then start it a week later. The Kickstarter appeal was the only chance people had to buy the book; even if there is a high demand we are not going to reprint it and we’re not going to talk to publishers. This it.
PM:
You’ve termed Curious Iconic Craft a “celebration” of your time with these two magazines, but does it also function as a form of closure now that you will no longer be working on these publications?
RL:
Yeah I think it is in a way. It’s not a somber thing at all, but you know, Little White Lies was conceived when I was at university with Dan. That’s now eight years ago, and everything from name to dimensions to font choices to masthead for both magazines all came out of our heads, so its certainly a big deal to move away from all that. We want to celebrate what we did but also to bring an end to our involvement in a fitting way.
PM:
As a book Curious Iconic Craft will obviously be of interest to fans of either magazine, but you’ve also mentioned that it is an opportunity to pass on the wealth of knowledge you’ve gained as designers, editors and publishers?
RL:
We’ve always had this ambition to share what we do. When we started doing this nobody knew what a magazine office looked like, and other than the masthead of the magazine nobody knew who these people were or how they worked. The reason we wanted to do this was because we’ve learnt a lot and there is a lot of stuff that hasn’t gone into the mags that we want to make available.
PM:
And what are you going to miss most about working on the publications?
My immediate answer to that is that I’m going to miss working with the team of guys that we’ve left behind at The Church of London. The editorial guys there are amazing, they’re such an exciting and forward-thinking group. Obviously the beauty of a magazine is that you are speaking to a whole range of contributors, illustrators, photographers, film makers, writers, so that’s going to be something that I’ll miss; you are forced, in the best possible way, to work with a brand new set of people every time.
PM:
What do you think about the state of independent magazine culture?
RL:
Steve [Watson], who runs Stack (an independent magazine subscription and delivery service), works in our office and so every day he’s getting new titles through the door and the wealth of stuff is just mind-blowing. People are always talking about whether print is dead or not, but if you look at what comes through the door for Steve then it’s clearly thriving. There’s ambition to make great printed products, there’s ambition to make great magazines. Back when we started we didn’t even have websites for the mags, so the object itself was the only form of communication we had with the people who were interested in what we did. It became our intention to turn Huck and Little White Lies into a brand; they weren’t just a magazine with a website and an app. That’s a big difference – you have to look at the broader spectrum when you’re starting a magazine now. How ever beautiful you make it look, if you can only afford to print 500 copies of your first issue you have to think of other ways of engaging your audience.
PM
: So you would definitely encourage people who were looking at setting up their own magazine?
RL:
It’s difficult and it’s expensive, but I would absolutely advise it. When we first started we were blissfully unaware of the challenges, it was just a group of friends who got together without much cash but we pooled what resources we had and managed to print our first issue. We would not be a creative agency working for clients all around the world if it were not for the fact that we made these magazines, so I could never say “don’t go for it”.Curious Iconic Craft will be delivered to supporters at the end of July.