Talk from Liv Siddall

Liv studied graphic design at Kingston university from 2009, she didn't really understand what she was doing and found herself doing stuff just fro the sake of it most of the time. She found herself more interested in other people's work rather than her own. At the end of her degree her friends were apply at branding agencies etc yet she still didn't know what to do with herself. Luckily one of her tutors offered her advice and managed to get her a placement at 'It's Nice That' where she stayed for 4 years.

When she first started there were only 5 people in an office writing content for the website, it wasn't about anything specific just anything they could find that was creative and interesting. She managed to work her way up to being the online editor at It's Nice That and ended up working amongst 40 people. She found herself more interested in weird stuff and writing about that. It was very rare that they would write an in-depth article. 

After this she went freelance until she got an email from Rough Trade (a record shop) offering her a job writing for their magazine every month. Rough Trade started in 1976 and their aim was to expand and create a magazine. Liv's job was to film bands playing in the record shop and interviewing them as well as creating a 64 page magazine every month. 

As she wasn't skilled in terms of design she got her friend Bruce Usher to help her design the magazine. However due to his busy schedule she ended up making a magazine every 2 and a half weeks. To help the process she made a basic template which she used for every issue. She had a lot of fun during the process as no one was there to check over it and tell her it was rubbish. To fill up the content she had many unusual ideas to help her. She asked bands to write the horoscopes every month to make it a bit different. An agony aunt was then added which again made less work for Liv. The column was called "Ask Johnathon'

Each feature in the magazine was done in a fun way, she would get bands to send in their own art work if they were creative or simply send them a disposable camera to take photos on.
In April this year she had a guest editor in the for of Mac DeMarco which went down really well. He designed and provided the content for the whole magazine which his fans loved.

Despite how good her work was, Liv never really received much positive feedback so when she did she sent them a gift to say thank you which I thought was a nice idea. 

Sadly after 18 months the magazine was cancelled as they wanted to spend the money on social media instead therefore there was no budget for it. 

A magazine suggested by Liv was Migrant magazine which was made by accident as they didn't originally set out to create a magazine.