A year ago today, Europe was dealing with a large invisible cloud looming over its airspace, and I was coming up with a crazy idea.

In the year since, Stranded magazine has been talked about on BBC online and radio, in The Independent, Conde Nast Traveler, El Pais, Wired, Nieman Lab… and so on. This showcase in crowdsourced creation, awesomely designed by Matt MacArthur, is, of course, still available.

Though the eruption and the photos/illustrations/writing all occurred a year ago, the magazine actually went on sale in September, which is how long it took Matt and I to pull all the content together. Here’s the stats from the magazine so far:

That $1,380 isn’t profit to me – it’s what the magazine has so far raised for the International Rescue Committee, who help people more permanently stranded around the globe (in fact, due to the way MagCloud distributes the money, I’ve been hit with a higher tax bill because of it!)

Anyway, it’s a great cause, so if you don’t already have a copy, why not?

It’s been a fascinating year for magazines.

Redesigns from Creative Review (by Paul Pensom) and icon (by Ken Leung) have added new flair to two of the strongest design titles on the newsstand, while Grafik fell but will rise again very soon.

Elsewhere, Little White Lies reached five years of great covers and thematic movie coverage and then promptly changed its logo, Elle UK made some gorgeous subscriber covers and Elle Collections made me look again at the catwalk with fresh eyes, Monocle continued to defy expectations with further expansion and two newspaper-magazine hybrids for the sea and ski elite, Wallpaper* has continued to experiment boldly with form and content, and GOOD made a tiny shift in its vocabulary to turn its subscribers into “members” of their wider community, a move that others will doubtless seek to emulate.

Self-publishers were given a lift by an improved MagCloud offering, while The Newspaper Club got wider recognition and is now eyeing up an American expansion. And the whole Roger Black/design templates controversy faded away almost as quickly as it swept in.

Pop under Dasha Zhukova did some lovely things, and I’m looking forward to seeing how its former editorial director Ashley Heath will continue the bold, eclectic approach. On the geek side, Wired UK continued to differentiate itself from its American big brother with Europe-focused stories and graphic playfulness. Worth it for the Warren Ellis and Russell Davies columns alone.

So many smaller independent magazines have produced creative, exciting, groundbreaking work in print this year. The Kasino crew unveiled their new project, showing how they can still create an entertaining publication even while using all four colours. Residing several miles further west than leftfield, Dodgem Logic is silly, funny, angry, smart, and subversive in all the right ways – and highly affordable too, as is Manzine which gets better and better with every issue, reaching far beyond its early in-jokiness to become an essential and witty read for people of both sexes.

Over the past 12 months, Mono.kultur and Gym Class have exemplified how fantastic one-person operations can be, when that person has talent, a clear vision and the confidence to make what they want to read, while Put A Egg On It deservedly got enough attention to turn it into a going concern.

Apartamento‘s star continues to rise, taking over the mantle of Fantastic Man as the hip mag to be seen with first – only because FM has now all but established itself as a fixture in the alternative mainstream. It continues to innovate with features that merit its chosen adjective. Its new sister, The Gentlewoman, has yet to settle, but there’s certainly an audience for it out there.

OK Periodicals has moved forward boldly, and now runs its own events as well – bravo, say I. Independent publishing needs as many gathering points as it can get. Elsewhere, my fellow Colophon curator Mike’s Nico gets better and better, and The Gopher Illustrated is a top tip to watch in 2011. Its first issue was adventurous, entertaining, and featured stickers of all the images in colour, for you to place on the pages (or elsewhere) yourself. Its creators recently moved from Venezuela to the creative hub of Austin. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

Elsewhere, IL, Eureka and the Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin‘s designs this year suggest that the golden age of magazine supplements isn’t over. Freed from the pressures of the open newsstand, supplements should be brave and bold enough to drive the purchase of the newspaper. And speaking of newspapers, i has had another great year of design work. Its art director, Nick Mrozowski, is on his way back to the States – but we should certainly keep an eye on what his successor gets up to.

As for myself, this was the first year of Stack America, and I’m indebted to the makers of Meatpaper, Megawords, Pin-Up, d[x]i, Beautiful/Decay, Little White Lies, GOOD, Embrocation, Put A Egg On It, The Oxford American, PWR Paper, Bad Day, MYMAG, and Abe’s Penny for agreeing to let me share their creative work with subscribers. Choosing the right publications hasn’t been an easy decision, not because they’re hard to find, but because so much fascinating work is out there. There will be plenty more of that to come in 2011. (Subscribe now!)

I’ve also given talks in Bulgaria, Spain and the USA, written about magazines and associated industries for Eye magazine among many others, and wrote the copy for Turning Pages, a weighty tome filled with snapshots of inspiring contemporary editorial design. We also announced a bold new move for Colophon – lots of excitement around that, some of which should bear some fruit soon.

And of course I got trapped by a volcano and made Stranded, a print-on-demand magazine about the experience, created by those in the same situation. Sales continue to come through; so far, it’s raised more than $1300 for the International Rescue Committee. (Buy one now!)

I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch of great work that I really should have mentioned. Apologies if I didn’t include something you’ve worked on – please excuse it as an omission of forgetfulness, and not any kind of implied criticism. I hereby endeavour to review more titles, and faster, than I was able to this year.

There are, however three magazines that have had an outstanding 2010, and which I haven’t mentioned here. This was deliberate, because in the coming days, I’m going to announce my personal top three magazines of the year. It’s an individual selection, and entirely dependent on my mood at the moment of writing.

Though quite different in subject matter, what they have in common is an ability to make my brain expand and my fingers tingle when I turn the pages. No perspex blocks or shiny designer trophys will be handed out, only my respect and admiration.

And of course, there’s been the iPad. We’re in its early stages, but Letter to Jane, The New Yorker, Flipboard, Mag+ and my favourite mainstream magazine app of the year, The Times’ Eureka point to some fascinating new strides in publishing on their way very shortly. I haven’t written too much about iPad publications on Magtastic this year, a function of real-life preoccupations rather than a philosophical standpoint. That will change, quite significantly, early in 2011 – but not here. More on that very soon.

Recession be damned. It’s been a heck of year, and I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has shared their projects with me. Here’s to an even bolder, better year for contemporary storytelling in 2011. As I said in my intro to Turning Pages, this is truly The Golden Age of Print.

So what did I miss out?

The Volcanobook’s cover illustration is made of Icelandic ash
“The idea started when the Eyjó-ashcloud hit Europe in April 2010 for several weeks. Everyone was complaining about it and we felt the urge to turn it into something positive.” Sounds familiar. The insides compile the work of designers, illustrators, and vulcanologists. It looks great. *cough* Stranded has more pages and is cheaper */cough*

apartamento magazine has begun its own book publishing line
First title: The Story of a Mug by byggstudio

Zeit magazine – - supplement to weekly German newspaper Die Zeit – celebrates 40 years with 40 Claudias
Explanation: she’s 40 too, and also she has a new fashion line out

GmbH x The Modern Institute is a wonderful little mag store in Glasgow
Though can we finish with this whole “Mag x Something” style of branding please?

I’m looking forward to the new issue of 8
It’s a consistently terrific photojournalism mag – and I’m even more excited by this line: “If you’re an avid reader of 8, you will notice with this issue our experiments with the printed page. Next year will see us not only taking our themes further but bringing them to you each time in a new, specific, and subject-led format.” Yes, please

Newspapers are (finally) learning from magazines
Bob Newman unearths some winners

Conde Nast has some advice for iPad advertisers
Basically, “make it good, make it work, make it easy for them to buy your stuff”

“iPad whitepaper insults marketers’ intelligence”
Nxtbook’s Marcus Grimm quite reasonably points out that “your advertisers aren’t paying you for ROI tomorrow.”

Print culture from the Spanish Civil War
This isn’t a new link, but it’s new to me, and it’s fantastic. Click on “Browse the magazines” – includes fashion magazines, news magazines… all the pages including the ads. Interface is a little restrictive, but the designs still shine. You’re welcome

Stranded is now digital! Available exclusively via the Zinio platform alongside side projects with similar budgets such as Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Esquire and The Economist, it’s a clean $5, all of which goes to the International Rescue Committee.

Zinio’s reader is available on iPhone, iPad, PC, Mac, Game & Watch, all LG front-load washing machines (not the 89T washer-dryer) and ZX Spectrum.

And you can buy the Zinio edition of Stranded here.

For the story behind Stranded, click here.

The Last Newspaper exhibition opens at The New Museum
The catalogue is being published and handed out for free as it goes along, in a weekly newspaper format created by Latitudes. Here’s a video of the first one – at the end, they’ll all be bound together and sold as a limited-edition book. I have a piece in the second paper, out next week

Doux is a visually striking online-only mag from Argentina
An increasing number of great-looking mags are publishing exclusively on Issuu. Will they please hurry up and do a tie-in with MagCloud please?

Tabloid magazines don’t tell the truth
But how much can we trust Gawker?

Vag magazine is a web comedy about making a feminist magazine
Gags in the trailer are more about feminism than magazines. Still, worth a watch it seems

Scott Dadich, George Lois, Nate Williams, and Dublin – together at last!
Interviews from the OFFSET festival for your audible pleasure. More on that festival on the Blogsplosion soon…

Stranded is getting some lovely reviews
Here (“a zillion pages (official count)”), here (“so good I changed my tagline”), here (“una obra de 88 páginas fruto de las frustraciones y el tiempo libre de los pasajeros atrapados”), here (“it’s charming”), here (“makes me wish I’d been stranded”), here (“some truly incredible photography”), and oo, all over the place really. What do you mean you haven’t got a copy yet? All for a good cause, you know. (Digital edition to come, as soon as the lawyers have all done with their business)

Innovation presents the Newsslate prototype
The future appears to be an ever-doubling interactive publication that forces you to buy a bigger table in order to read the news

A few months ago, when a volcano erupted and I was stuck in Dublin, I said this:

This is an open call to designers, writers, photographers, illustrators, art directors and anyone else who is stranded by the ash cloud, and would like something to do.

If there’s one thing my ol’ ma taught me, it’s that when life gives you volcanoes, make magazines. And so we shall.

I’m nothing if not a man of my word, thus Stranded magazine is now on sale. The concept, commissioning and editing are all me; the design is all Matt McArthur, who was stranded in New York. We’ve yet to meet or even speak on the phone, but we worked together marvellously thanks to the wonders of modern gin communication.

As for the words and images.. they’re courtesy of more than fifty fantastically talented people I’ve never met, all of whom were similarly stuck and mercifully, I presume, as bored as I was in trying not to spend any money while stuck somewhere unexpected. They fulfilled commissions, they answered surveys, they ordered cocktails and they took photographs of their temporary beds. In a few cases, they caught their flights before they could complete their briefs – and I’ve included some of those too.

What we’ve made of it all is an 88-page souvenir of a moment in time when a non-life-threatening crisis hit the world, one for which nobody was to blame, and nobody knew how long it would last. People scrambled to find alternative routes home, any way, any how, or tried to make the best of wherever fate had placed them. It was a moment of unplanned disruption, never to be repeated in quite the same way.

The perfect subject for a magazine, in fact.

The print edition is on sale now, and ships worldwide. It costs $18.95+shipping – which is the base price charged by MagCloud (including a discount for being a charity mag and including their ad on the back page – much appreciated guys) plus $5 on top, all of which goes directly to the PayPal account of the International Rescue Committee, to help those more permanently stranded around the world. A digital edition is in the works, though it’s primarily been designed for paper and ink.

We’re inordinately proud of the whole thing, so why not pick up a copy or two? (Twenty or more gets a 25% discount, you know)

And please help us spread the word. We want to raise as much money as we can for the IRC – and hey, it’s a great magazine too. Everyone should own a copy, in case of eruptions.

Questions? Ask me here.

As my faithful Twitter followers already know, Stranded magazine, the only publication made entirely by people unable to take flights home due to the volcanic ash cloud of April, is a couple of short weeks away from being on sale. It’ll be available both digitally and in print, with all proceeds to the International Rescue Committee.

Sneak previews available here… and it’s looking lovely. Keep watching the skies, people.

I’ll keep posting news on here, but if you’d like to receive email updates, including information about when it becomes available, fill in this form. I promise not to use your details for anything else, ever. (If you want more general updates about what I’m up to, the form is on the bottom left here.)

Here’s a few excerpts from what’s come in so far:

What’s that?
What’s what?
Out the window.
It’s a cloud.
It’s a really dark cloud. Are we over the volcano?
We shouldn’t be.
But are we?
I don’t think so.
It looks like the cloud’s getting bigger. We’re heading towards it.
That would be ridiculous. Why would we do that?

- ‘Losing Altitude’, a spooky short story by Chief Clancy Writer Richard Dansky

One of the ways we measure progress is through a constant increase in the possible connections between people, places and things – a constant expansion of social, spatial and commercial networks enabled by the Internet and by international transport and trade.

What happens when the system, defined by so many dependencies, disrupts? Are we equipped to plan for a future characterized by unpredictable constrictions on the supply of on-demand access to those people, places and things outside of our immediate, physical grasp? Probably not. But, wait, isn’t this the future that the climate crisis promises? Most definitely.

- ‘Disruptions to the System’ by Cassim Shephard

‘Act of God’ was the explanation heard most frequently when there were monies or reimbursements involved.  Moreover, the American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh declared that the ash cloud was revenge from God for the passage of the Health Care bill in the US. 

God, of course, is a wrathful, mean-spirited Republican but why would he want to take out his anger by condemning jet-setters to an extra week or more of vacation?

- ‘Explanations for Airspace Closure’ by Squawker_

All the tracks but one are connected to airports, flying, traveling, the cosmos or driving. Overall, there’s a movement in opposition to being stuck in an airport.

It starts with Ambient 1 Music For Airports (Brian Eno) and finishes with Music For Shopping Malls (Zafka / 718 / Yan Jun), which is all about consumerism, as all those “poor” people stuck at the airport will go shopping there, and feel better in the end.

- ‘Track list for people stuck in airports’ by C-drík

Oh and there’s this, created by Matt McArthur:

I think we’re onto something here. Contributors still welcome – as long as you are, or were, stuck somewhere due to the ash cloud. Thanks, by the way, to The Guardian and The Independent for featuring it. The mag’ll be on sale within a month.

After six days begging the cloud to disappear, I’m now praying it hangs around, at least long enough for my new editorial team to fulfill their commissions. Still, the backlog at the airports should help.

Things are slowly coming into place. I’ve decided to split the magazine into two sections, Stranded and Grounded. The first is for people stuck away from home. The second is for people stuck at home and unable to get to wherever they were planning on going.

Both sections are still very much open for contributors. So far, we include in our number some experienced brand designers, a horror writer, an art critic, a teacher (with his class in tow), a couple of photographers and illustrators, two djs, a jewellery designer, a social media expert… If you’re stranded like we are, this is the party to be at.

There’s been one more slight change to the project: after some thought, I’ve decided to change the designated charity destination for any profits from the magazine. Rather than a climate change charity (which is an important issue, don’t get me wrong), I’ve decided it’s much more fitting/poetic to give any monies to a refugee charity.

Millions of people are currently stranded away from home around the world, for more tragic reasons than an ash cloud. Many of them face few or no prospects of ever making it back, and also aren’t welcome in the countries they’ve landed in. There are important parallels and differences between the two situations, and I want to highlight some of these through my choice of recipient.

As for which charity… I’ll choose one as soon as I have time to research it. Any suggestions more than welcome.