This year’s competition attracted more than 400 entries from 23 countries, covering a huge variety of subjects, from mental health to feminist horror, and it was brilliant to bring so many magazine makers together in one place.
Magazine of the Year 2018 was presented to Good Trouble — the broadsheet title dedicated to telling stories of protest and resistance. Providing a platform for lesser-heard voices, it follows Senator John Lewis’s call for “good trouble, necessary trouble”, and we delivered it to Stack subscribers in August this year. Created by ex-Dazed editor Rod Stanley and art director Richard Turley, it caught the judges’ attention with its timely and unconventional reflection of the social and political moment, and Jeremy Lesley, founder of magCulture and one of the category’s judges, praised the mixture of raw outrage and expert execution that makes it so remarkable:
“This is a magazine for its time; a heady mix of rabble-rousing politics and humour that applies the spontaneous excitement of a punk zine to an absurd broadsheet newspaper format. It’s the unmistakable result of an experienced team of magazine makers putting their money where their mouth is.”
Elsewhere, Launch of the Year went to feminist horror magazine Suspira, which impressed the judges with its ‘Monsters’ issue. Category judge Urs Spindler praised the new title for its “original and contemporary editorial voice,” and also “for reclaiming a genre for women that has long been more or less of a male domain.”
And having narrowly missed out in the launch category, Cover of the Year went to New York-based graphic design title Eye On Design, with judge Steven Heller noting that the magazine “stood out in a happily crowded group of fine covers… The die cut of the eye and the vibrating psychedelic colours were perfectly selected for a (literally) eye-catching design mag.”
See below for all of this year’s winners and commended titles:
Magazine of the Year
Winner: Good Trouble
Commended: Flaneur, Migrant Journal
Launch of the Year
Winner: Suspira
Commended: Archivio, Eye on Design
Editor of the Year
Winner: The Skirt Chronicles
Commended: Migrant Journal
Art Director of the Year
Winner: Anxy
Commended: A New Type of Imprint, Migrant Journal
Cover of the Year
Winner: Eye on Design
Commended: Pan and the Dream, Printed Pages
Best Use of Photography
Winner: Archivio
Commended: Der Greif, Justified
Best Use of Illustration
Winner: Anxy
Commended: A Profound Waste of Time
Best Original Non-Fiction
Winner: Nataal
Commended: Ecotone, Racquet
Best Original Fiction
Winner: Ecotone
Commended: Still, The Tangerine
Student Magazine of the Year
Winner: Brasilia
Commended: Aether, Crumble
Subscribers’ Choice
Winner: Perdiz
Commended: Four & Sons, Kajet
To see all this year’s shortlisted magazines, and to read about the judges and what we were looking for, take a look at our awards page. Or dive deeper into the magazines with a category by category look at all of this year’s shortlisted magazines