Print as Editorial Idea: A Magazine You Move Through

Can a magazine evoke the feeling of a psychedelic trip? Elastic thinks so. The goal of the Montreal-based mag is to create a lush, immersive, familiar-but-strange experience through art, writing, design, and the physicality of the page. Using Elastic as a case study, founder and editor-in-chief Hillary Brenhouse will explore a more integrated approach to print publishing, in which subject matter and structure are devised together and closely aligned. 

What happens when a magazine's physical form is inseparable from its editorial idea, rather than just a container? And how does that impact the reader? 

Every element of Elastic comes together to overwhelm the senses, bringing psychedelic art beyond the cartoonish imagery that inhabits the popular imagination. A magazine focused on sex and intimacy might foreground touch and the feel of the page. A food issue might mirror the slow, cumulative pleasure of a long meal. A project invested in community-building could take shape as a printed object that brings dozens of contributors into a sustained cultural conversation, resisting the scattered way we read online.

In this session, Brenhouse will consider how a magazine's format — its materials, its sequencing, its tactile presence — can be indispensable to its identity, and how treating print as integral to editorial vision yields a deeper, more embodied reading experience.