Mushpit

0:14[Applause]

0:23hello oh hi okay quite nervous cuz everyone's been really amazing I'm hilar we're nor the funny on so can you just laugh we make a magazine called mush pit it looks like this it hasn't always looked like this these were the Teeny Zen ones that we made back in 2011 and they were this small. And we spent all our student Lear to make them.

0:50And then we went for this weird size which is obviously the crap one so it was like all A4 here cuz that's what we could afford and we got them printed on Essex Road and we sort of just made it out of the of making it and pure mad Joy of like expressing ourselves then we tried to become legit and made a disgusting one with advert and then we made some good ones the last of which is actually stocked in foils so she's really happy about that we're also really happy and Japan and Europe so it's big deal this issue six was shot by Tyrone LeBron which we show off about loads issue seven was shot by Alice Neil and this is by Eloise Parry this was like when we did the first kind of big format one and kind of got legitimate and people took us a tiny bit more seriously yeah.

1:38So oh very loud we've been described as confident silly satirical and fiercely political in places we've also been described as ugly untiy and cheap that's actually quite kind we've been described as way worse than that and personally as well a graphic design is worth nightmare which isn't not there.

1:57But yeah it ALS started with a student loan so we would like to officially thank the conservative government because we're never going to pay that back this.

2:09This is very early days when we used to shoot people on our digital camera and photo booth and have parties to pay for it. This is us just showing off a bit I guess yeah.

2:20So we basically went we made this transition where we started off really zeny A5 kind of figuring out in designers we went neither of us have any kind of formal training in design as you can probably tell or I'm a writer Charlotte's a stylist and we were sort of making it up on the outside of working in fashion.

2:37And we developed it over about 5 Years From A Zen that we supported from throwing parties and getting a cart of the bar quite a small cart to now having kind of what looks like a normal glossy magazine but the reality of it is it's completely independent it's adree we're really interested in having quite a reliable dialogue with our reader where we're not trying to sell her anything we talk about things that really affect her but having no adverts is quite problematic for us because we also have no money and we also don't have student loans anymore so how do you make that work wait go back to our brain okay this is our brain so this is our brain and this is kind of where we're at now it looks like it says we're 28 but we're not we're 26 and this is kind of so as a fashion magazine which is trying to like explode ideas of industry and kind of like classic that capitalist model of like selling adverts and shooting full looks if anyone Works in Fashion they'll know what we're talking about into something which what could be inspirational and in a way anarchic is where we're at now and these are the sort of questions that we ask ourselves should we sell our souls who would even buy our souls I don't know maybe no one maybe no one which is kind of sad how do we grow it into something.

4:00So these are these are some examples of why we can't grow yeah because advertisers don't love that we have full frontal pictures of vaginas in the magazine or add campaigns about wanking with a shower and then or also fictitious Trend reports on migrant sheet which was actually pulled a lot from a very famous website that we won't mention and BR but maybe guess this is also our fictitious weather spoons Works which is a kind of play on another brand who does a particular works and they have working Studios so we made our own and complete with iPhone photos from the local weather spoons so it's all kind of like it's satirical definitely but it also plays into things which are affecting us in our daily lives and how as Freelancers we're being told that we should be paying £600 a month to rent like a roing desk space in a weird Works everyone knows what we're talking about so whatever so like what we we kind of use quite light humor to make what we hope is a heavier point this is a planning notice it says putting the social in Social cleansing we actually put them up well we didn't the people that did it at Fin and Maria put them up in olate you can't read it unfortunately which means you probably just have to buy the magazine but it says direction of mixed use development comprising of very expensive essentially this is some more so this is also we branched out in issue seven which was the issue before this one obviously we were quite depressed by the election.

5:44So we thought instead of moaning about it we would create our own political party in New lebia obviously everyone gets the pun and these are our pledges for 2020 and then obviously we made some T-shirts and everyone bought them. And this is basically our shadow cabinet yeah we haven't registered yet as an official political party but I feel like if we did we'd have quite a lot of clout yeah we have like about 15 members this is kind of where it gets tricky obviously every independent magazine has this problem like whether to get adverts whether to get a benefactor we flirted with adverts in issue five which is the weird sized issue that we didn't like and actually The Advertiser we had at the time told us not to put a girl on the front car who now is very famous for her kind of like feminist attributes and it was because she had armpit hair and that kind of was a learning Cur for us and that we didn't want to yeah you. Basically realized early on that you you either prioritize having stability and having adverts or you prioritize having editorial freedom and so what's interesting to us is trying to not even strike a balance actually but like figure out how you can keep the magazine kind of separate from that whole thing.

7:02And we sort of we sort of sell our own personal Souls doing consulting so that we can keep this totally free and or just work out whether the tradeoff works for you obviously some people some Brands would work. And some wouldn't and also yeah you can have a secret benefactor and that would be like the ideal thing anyone so we have fake adverts instead because they're more fun this was done by S from the ra yeah she's an artist and she kind of like set up fake still Liv she worked in a shop in Germany and then she realized they weren't selling any perfumes so she was like I just make for their kind of counterfeit perfume so she's like I'll just make a series of adts for you. Basically on like very famous still life adverts anyway and the ended up selling loads and then we put them in our magazine and they're very beautiful some more examples Jonathan Baron who used to do Baron. And now baroness magazine he made a series of ads for the previous issue this is an for new laia we made kind of Eco t-shirts that we sold through Instagram which was quite fun to see people wearing them although it does make me a bit uncomfortable this is another example of a product we always have products in Mash fit.

8:13So this is a tinkle be gone because I have a very loud toilet and it was kind of distressing me.

8:19So we created this product which would silence the Wii a Wii silencer and then.

8:24That's quite self-explanatory jeans just hurt vaginas so so this is how we do fashion which is very different from all the fashion titles even though we kind of get put on amongst them on the shelves but I think it's why people come to us and why we have an exciting roster of photographers this is by Claudia Sinclair who is actually a stylist but we decided we came up with this kind of concept together where she put designer bags which we borrowed legitimately for the first time without me lying through the magazine I used to work for so we had Dior and Chanel handbags in toilets and TR toilets they kind of the real places that they would end up being if you had one Le to Sol this is our shadow this is my favorite this is like my favorite we've ever done where we using Instagram again like we connect with our readers a lot through that we cast a whole story of people that had bought either badges or t-shirts or magazines from us and yeah we sort of created the new Leia Shadow cabinet and they all had objectives and we put them all in power suits and it's really really strong I think this is the cover story Eloise Parry who it's a young female photographer who we work with like from kind of very early mushpit stages all the girls in terms of casting it's very important that we kind of use Street casts or people that we know not like models from model agencies and also that it means something.

9:49So this is kind of all about like reflection. And it's one of our favorite stories yeah it's kind of unique as well that because we don't have advertisers we can use the back cover as well as the front cover so we always play around with how those two can kind of get on.

10:06So we do a lot of doubling this was about the issue theme was motherhood so this was about motherhood but minus the man which was good so she had an egg the egg looks I mean it's a real kind of real egg yeah we made like a homemade Nest it was kind of all about like a domestic setting but a madade nest and we kind of were very obsessed with this idea throughout the magazine this is our male this really upped the print cost wasn't fun for us.

10:33But they all have a poster and then it has cats on the back we've always had a male sender forward since the first issue it's just it hars back to that whole kind of j17 bliss Miz sugar we're really inspired by early girl mags we love the kind of tone of voice that they had it really it felt so familiar when we were reading them I think we both when we met and started talking about it they had been the magazines that we really remembered enjoying reading and then kind of more recently not more recently in time wise but then we found cheap date which was sort of more grown up and that was equally inspiring but it's this whole feeling of like there's a humor there.

11:09And it's directed towards women so the m interfold just makes perfect sense and then.

11:16And then we also have writing as well as all of that.

11:19So this is an article that I wrote for the most recent issue which is about the Margaret Pike Center which is a sexual health clinic in Kings Cross which actually got shut down about 2 weeks ago.

11:30But this was about trying to save it sadly then also at the bottom you can see the different contraception we've used so there was Jeremy Hunt as one yeah we made some devices alternative devices you can't really see that's a cocktail umbrella that's Jeremy Hunt that's an anchor and a champagne cork yeah cuz those would work Rea ma did a column about how to masturbate and why you should masturbate every day and she made a playlist which is very good listening if you're interested and then people like Clive Martin who have been contributing I mean Clive is an amazing writer and he's kind of gone from strength to strength in his career but actually must published him first yeah and this is a take on like new lad obviously which was like massive and he got paid loads of money for another publication to do new lad so he thought it' be quite funny to do his new take on it which his new dad which is sort of the Danny D yeah which is what everyone's dressing like now like Adidas is out.

12:30And then so and Poland X are in very very much.

12:33This is our Agony Aunt Harriet Bernie complete with her own helpl lines she's our terrible agon Aunt who gives really bad advice absolutely Dreadful advice about never using a condom and then our classified which are almost entirely fictitious and US yeah and then a bit more stuff that we do when we have the time.

12:56So we sell things we talk about off we sit places and some this we also we also did an event recently called Panic by which was a secondhand kind of clothing Bonanza which is which fits really well with our ethos and it's all about you know people coming and being able to buy something for5 from someone that they recognize off Instagram and want something out of their wardrobe and Recycling and making you feel good so we did that next is this bye and that's it thank thank you [Applause]