10 INDEPENDENT PRINT MAGAZINES WORTH COLLECTING

The list

Delayed Gratification - the slow journalism magazine. It covers the news three months after it happened, which turns out to be when the interesting part starts.

Courier - the magazine of modern business, for people building small companies on purpose rather than unicorns by accident.

MacGuffin - each issue takes one ordinary object - the bed, the rope, the sink - and pulls an entire world out of it.

The Gourmand - food writing and photography with an art-school brain. Nothing like a recipe magazine, in the best way.

Racquet - tennis as culture, style and history. You do not need to play. You barely need to like tennis.

Fantastic Man - men's style and long interviews, done with more wit and less product than the big glossies.

Anorak - technically a children's magazine, actually one of the best-designed objects in British print. Steal it from a child.

Eye on Design - the design world's own magazine, covering the people and politics behind the visuals.

Real Review - architecture, cities and what it means to live now. Dense, sharp, quietly radical.

Delayed Gratification's little sibling in spirit: your local zine scene. Check the counter of any good record shop or café.

Why print, still

None of these magazines can send you a notification. None of them refresh. You finish one and it sits there, finished, like a record or a good meal.

That finiteness is the feature. An hour with a printed magazine gives you back something an hour with a feed never does - the feeling that the time was yours.

Where to find them

Independent magazine shops exist in most big cities, and the good ones will talk your ear off if you let them. Many of these also sell direct from their own sites, which is where the money does the most good.

Start with one. Read it cover to cover, the way it was designed to be read. Then you will understand why people collect them.