I was so inspired by the recent Magazine Street that took place in Glasgow, I decided to restart my old magazine blog. I can’t believe it’s 10 years since I last posted.
I joined Connect that year (2015) and I’ve been busy making magazines of one kind or another since then. Still doing that, although on a part-time basis now.
Anyway, if you were at Magazine Street – lucky you. Hopefully you saw Nancy Heley talking about her new launch – Sandweegies. It’s a great name for a magazine about sandwich shops in Glasgow (Weegies is a slang term for Glaswegians). Just saying the name brought a smile to lots of faces in the audience. Nancy left Glasgow School of Art two years ago, and, after failing to find a full-time design job, decided to launch Sandweegies.
It will have helped that Nancy has a part-time job in one of the coolest magazine shops in Glasgow – The Magazine Appreciation Society. I am sure owner Chester Adams made lots of suggestions which helped Nancy create a great first issue.
So, on to the magazine itself. With a sub-text stating ‘Glasgow, told one sandwich at a time’, this issue is themed around chicken. Six cafés are featured in this hefty 84pp magazine, with one photographer, Paul Reich supplying original images for each one. He’s done a great job. The pictures have an appealing oversaturated quality, although this may have been done post-production. I would have liked to have seen captions on at least some of the pictures, especially those with people in them. In some cases it’s obvious that it’s the owner of the café, but when there are two owners and only one person in the photo – which one is it?
As designer, Nancy has chosen to use colourful tints across all the pages. At first I thought this was to colour code each café article, but they seem to vary throughout. There is no ‘creative white space’ – but there is a lot of creative space. Nancy certainly uses the colours well and they are a refreshing change from lots of other publications that seem scared to use colour in this way.
The articles, if you can call them that (they average at 150 to 300 words each), are well written by a team of enthusiastic contributors keen to make a mark in the industry. I would have liked more of a critique of the sandwich to be honest. Only Ava Ahmann does this with real conviction.
There are some odd design decisions (centred folios at the top of pages), but these are things that can be ironed out, and it’s the beauty of magazines that you can build on the success of your first issue and make subsequent issues even better.
Perfect bound, with a matt laminate cover (so you can eat a sandwich while reading it?) There are only two pages of advertising. Nancy was asked the question at Magazine Street – “How did you fund this project?” She admitted that she hadn’t really thought of going out and getting advertising, which suggests it was funded from her own pocket. Still, she’s done it. It’s out there and people are talking about it, which is the main thing.
Edit: Issue one has now sold out and Nancy is considering a reprint due to the demand. Issue two is already in the pipeline, so I am looking forward to seeing how things progress.
Sandweegies. £16 from studioheley.com