#1: INSIDE THE MUSTARD OFFICE
Several people have asked me if they can come and help out in the Mustard office, but the trouble is there isn't one. Well, there is, but it's wherever I'm sitting with my laptop; my spare room, a coffee shop or, today, the corner of a warehouse office in Greys Inn Road (home of fellow indy mags The Pavement and Nude).
Like most independent magazines, money is tight, tight, tight - so a day job is required to keep you going whilst you work on the mag for free. I design websites three days a week and spend another two (or three) on Mustard. It's extremely time consuming because I write about half the mag as well as being Editor, Designer, Writer and tea-boy. The other half of the magazine content comes from about a dozen other writers and artists, most contributing one article each, some three or four.
WRITERS
At first the other contributors were people I'd met at work or socially: Ralph Aspinall (an old friend's brother in law), Eva Tater (work colleague) and Andrew O'Neill (comedian I met on the circuit) have all been long-time contributors, and we even had a couple of group writing sessions in a pub before Ralph and Eva moved away from London (separately; they didn't elope). More recently I've had a lot of contributions sent in via email. Most of these don't quite cut it, but there's been some great stuff from people like Russ Flinn and Mike Donaldson, two regular contributors who I've never actually met face to face.
Usually people send in whatever they've written, a spoof story, classified ads, news headlines etc, but occasionally I ask them to write something specific. For example, Lloyd Langford wrote a 'first chapter' for issue #01 ('The Big Nasty') that was so good I got him to do another one in a different genre for issue #02. Also, some articles will be not quite there yet or (more often) too damn long, so it's on with my Editor's hat and I'll tweak it a bit, or hack away - this involves a fair bit of diplomacy and a back and forth of drafts between myself and the writer.
ARTISTS
There are also many contributing artists who send in their one-panel cartoons or spoof ads. Adrian Bamforth usually cranks out three or four great pieces. With issue #02 I was saved from photo-manipulation hell by a chance meeting with a professional illustrator called Daniel Morganstern, who created a series of striking Michael Palin portraits for the cover.
I often need specific illustrations created to accompany new articles, so I'll find an artist who's free and brief them (usually by doodling what I'm after, scanning it and emailing them). This can be tricky, because if you've got a gag that you need the artist to draw it's like they're the performer. If the 'performance' - the tone or personality of the image- is off, the joke can fall flat. All props to Mike Donaldson for being consistently excellent in this respect. His 'monkey at a typewriter' image has become an unofficial Mustard logo, used across the mag and in publicity material.
PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER
Once I've got all the articles and illustrations for an issue it's a case of laying it all out, creating a balance of content, themes and imagery across the magazine. This can be one of the most time-consuming parts as you're never really finished, you can keep tweaking forever and usually only stop because you've hit the print deadline.
PRINTING & AD SALES
The final step is actually getting the magazine printed. Even though everyone is working for free, this is where a sizeable injection of money is needed to keep the magazine alive. Each issue we have to sell enough ad space to pay for the print run, which means creating media packs and cold-calling media agencies, hitting the phones again and again. It can be a frustrating and disheartening experience and it often seems crazy that after all the work and effort everyone's put in you don't even know if it'll see the light of day. Luckily, after several false starts, I've now got a decent ad sales agency doing this for me and they seem to be on top of things, finger's crossed. Of course, now they have to sell enough ads to pay for the print run as well as their own bill.
THE FINISHED MAG
But all the hard work feels worth it when I'm holding a freshly printed copy of the new issue in my hands; something that had existed only in pixels now has a tactile existence, a weight and texture. And then it's time to release them into the wild, through the spawning grounds of comedy clubs and Borders bookshops across the UK. A few will perish, discarded on trains or night-busses and thrown away before they can find new owners; but most will be loved, shared amongst friends and eventually retire happily in their natural habitat: the downstairs toilet.
