Digest: The Motivation
I talked recently about Digest, the new large format magazine Elliot and I (under our Viewport Industries banner) have produced, and wanted to follow up that post with a little bit of the back story to it’s birth and the motivation that drove us to do yet more print.
It’s fair to say that magazines are one of my vices. I subscribe to a lot and buy many more. I’ve always loved them from a very early age. Growing up in the pre internet age magazines (at least to me) and newspapers said as much about a person as the music they listened to or the clothes they wore.
I remember once being called weird as I was reading Q magazine in the sandwich hall during my GCSE years. I was happy to live with that. To this day I still hold back on reading new titles that land on my door mat until the time is right. With two young children these moments are fleeting but worth the wait.
Over the years my tastes have changed but the passion for printed media, especially magazines, has remained. Whilst I love the opportunity that the internet has given us all in terms of publishing the printed page is somehow special – be it the size, the smell or the fact that an incoming notification won’t ruin your enjoyment of it.
We hadn’t planned on producing another print publication this year. In fact we both vowed to do more digital work in 2013 but somehow over many coffees earlier this year Digest was born. You can actually read the full story of how we got this far in the magazine.
As well as the opportunity to produce something of your own a magazine is also a very selfish endeavour. I say selfish as it means you get to work amazing people. As well as asking friends and colleagues to contribute we’ve met new friends like Harry, The B.B. Esq team and had the privilege of working remotely with amazing artists and illustrators like Paddy and Laura. All in all 22 people made Digest happen.
I hope that you enjoy Digest, be it in print or in our online version. Ultimately we hope you take a moment to be be consumed by the large spreads and articles and maybe, just maybe, leave your phone on silent whilst you do so.
Digest is now available at readdigest.com in print, PDF and Read Online versions.