From beautifully made journals and niche cultural titles to magazines devoted to film, fashion, photography and music, Cover Story wants to make discovering print an experience again. This autumn, the new independent magazine retailer is popping up in some of Brighton’s most interesting spaces while searching for a permanent home in the city.
There is something about finding a great magazine that the internet has never quite managed to replicate.
You might pick it up because of the cover, flick through because of an intriguing headline, then discover a photographer, writer, designer, musician or corner of culture you had no intention of looking for. There is no search term involved and no algorithm predicting what you already like. Sometimes the pleasure is simply in not knowing what you are going to find.
That sense of discovery is at the heart of Cover Story Brighton, a new independent magazine retailer founded by Leah, which will begin appearing around the city this autumn with a series of pop-up showcases.
The concept grew from a surprisingly simple observation: for a city as creative as Brighton, it can be remarkably difficult to find somewhere dedicated to discovering independent print.
Cities such as London and Manchester have specialist magazine shops where browsing is part of the experience. Cover Story wants to create Brighton’s own destination, bringing together independent, specialist and beautifully produced titles spanning film, photography, fashion, music, culture, design and fandom.
And rather than waiting until the perfect shop becomes available, Leah is starting now.
A magazine shop without a shop
While she searches for a permanent home, Cover Story will travel around Brighton, taking over cafés, cinemas and creative spaces for a series of temporary magazine shops.
The first takes place at Starfish & Coffee on 25 September, followed by Spro Coffee Co. on 2 October, Dukes at Komedia Picturehouse on 3 and 4 October, and The Archives on 11 October.
It makes for an unusually fitting introduction to Cover Story. Each event will be slightly different, placing independent magazines within some of the spaces and communities that make Brighton interesting in the first place.
“The response from Brighton has been amazing,” says Leah. “Everyone has been so supportive and so many people have offered to help us make it happen. We absolutely love the community here, and the pop-ups are a way of building that community while we look for our permanent home.”
There is something appealing about a magazine retailer beginning life this way. The shop does not exist yet in the conventional sense. Instead, its audience is getting the chance to discover it, shape it and become part of it before a permanent door has even opened.
Print as the new luxury
Cover Story describes its philosophy as “print is the new luxury”, and there is something increasingly convincing about that idea.
Not luxury in the traditional sense of expense or exclusivity, but in the increasingly rare experience of giving something your undivided attention.
Independent magazines offer a particularly good antidote to endless scrolling. They can be tactile, collectible and sometimes gloriously niche. They give photographers room for an image to breathe, designers control over how a story is experienced and writers the space to explore subjects beyond the demands of clicks and rapidly moving feeds.
They also remain one of the best places to stumble across something new.
The independent publishing world is full of small teams and individual creators producing magazines because they are passionate about a particular subject. Some appear quarterly, others annually or whenever their makers have something worth saying. Many are objects people keep rather than something destined for the recycling bin a week later.
That makes the places selling them important too.
A good independent magazine shop is more than somewhere to buy print. It becomes a cultural filter and a meeting point, introducing readers to publications they may never encounter otherwise and giving smaller publishers the physical presence that can be difficult to achieve online.
For a city built around independent businesses, music, art, fashion and creativity, Brighton feels like somewhere that should have one.
Cover Story is setting out to change that. And until its permanent home arrives, there is something rather special about the idea of following it around the city, discovering new magazines in a favourite café one week and inside a cinema the next.
Because perhaps the best way to rediscover print is exactly how we used to discover things in the first place: by coming across something we weren’t looking for.
Cover Story Brighton pop-ups
25 September
Starfish & Coffee
5pm to 8pm
2 October
Spro Coffee Co.
3pm to 6pm
3–4 October
Dukes at Komedia Picturehouse
2pm to 5pm
11 October
The Archives
3pm to 6pm
