The Step Back Q&A with Flagrant Mag: Digital isn’t dead but it’s coming to print

Flagrant Mag is a  sleek new print publication covering basketball and basketball culture. Co-founder Ashtyn Butuso sat down with The Step Back to discuss the vision.

Digital is dead. That’s the (tongue-in-cheek) message that Flagrant Mag chose as a tag line around the launch of their first issue. It’s an intentionally ironic choice for a print publication that brings the clean aesthetic, playful approach and broad thematic scope of a high-end digital sports media property.

The first issue, released this winter, features stories on basketball artists and WNBA guard Sydney Wiese, NBA-themed horoscopes and plenty more, all wrapped in a striking visual package. Co-founder Ashtyn Butuso spoke with The Step Back this week about the vision for the magazine and the leadership team’s plans for the future.

The Step Back: Can you talk a little bit about what the vision was for the magazine when you started the project?

Ashtyn Butuso: It wasn’t like the four of us got together and said, “what could we do, creatively?” It wasn’t like this huge brainchild. I went to each of the others, one at a time, sort of just speaking in hypotheticals, “wouldn’t it be cool if we did this? would it be cool if we did that?” We know there’s Franchise Magazine but we thought we could be a little bit different, and we think that we have. The conversation just started between me and each of them individually and when we all came together we were like, I guess we’re no longer speaking in hypotheticals, I guess we’re doing this. So it sort of evolved very organically. We each have different things we’re really good at and that’s why I approached each of the women that I did and just kind of put feelers out there and they were all ecstatic about it.

One of the things we discussed early on was the voices. We don’t intend on this magazine being just for women and the base so far has been pretty equal, between men and women. We do though want to include the feminine voice because it’s one that is often left out in the sports world. For a long time, things in sports that have been categorized as feminine are oftentimes thought of as lesser, like emotion, feelings, art, beauty, empathy. Often times those things fall to the wayside in sports because male sports fans kind of dominate the big picture. It’s been things like statistics and how a player is doing that have been more important aspects.

What we’re aiming to do with this is sort of force people to admit they care about the stories behind it. It’s not like that’s a new concept. Like, 30-for-30s are so fun and everybody loves watching behind the scenes stuff on sports, but acknowledging that it’s okay to care about your favorite player’s stats and also okay to think that they wore a cool outfit or like a picture that an artist illustrated or photographed.

We think of ourselves as a high-end art book more than a magazine, also in the way that we don’t have subscription-based services yet. But we’re still Flagrant Mag, we still are telling stories and I think that’s what separates us from our magazines out there. We’re really trying to capitalize on stories and not just you know NBA-centric stories but things that matter to everyone, you know, mental health and fashion and people breaking into sports and the spectrum is very wide.

TSB: The visual aesthetic of the magazine is really striking, it looks pretty different from other sports magazines. How much of the visual aesthetic was intentional as you went into the process and how much did evolve as you put the first issue together?

Butuso: The aesthetic is probably 1B, you know 1A is the overarching stories and themes. Nobody is reading magazines, in part because they’re boring and they’re typical and they don’t prioritize such a sharp aesthetic as we’re aiming for. That has been very important to us from the beginning.

Our creative directors, Brazilia and Bethany, one is in New York and one is in Oakland, they have really honed in on that and really done a good job working in colors and angles and really telling a story in the way things are laid out. And then Alex, who’s here in Portland, she is our design director and she is the one who actually laid out the magazine, physically. And she spent so much time work on the layout and the way the magazine all looks, cohesively, together. We created most of the content and then she was the one who watched it all evolve together. You know, every day it was like, “here’s version 28. Okay, here’s version 29. Okay, here’s version 30.” We’re all very proud of it and it’s just a testament to their strengths and all of our strengths as a team.

We got some art from brands that had shot some stuff for us and I think we were really particular about who it was that we wanted to include. You know, we included Mokuyobi and Chance Athletics and people we knew would help our aesthetic and tell the story that we wanted.

A way to describe the aesthetic is what I was touching on before. It’s certainly not a magazine for only women but I think you can feel the feminine touches and the female voice throughout, in a way that’s really appealing to men as well. It’s been really fun to watch that evolve.

TSB: How long did it take from conception to put this first issue together, and what’s the publishing plan from here?

Butuso: We always joke because we feel like it’s been three years that we’ve been working on this. I think what we’ve kind of decided on is that we worked on it for about nine months. We thought it would go a lot faster than that. We aimed originally to be doing something quarterly but we’re aiming for bi-annually but we’re also not going to put a ton of pressure on ourselves to make that deadline. What’s important to us is that it’s of quality and it’s something that people want to read and, quite frankly, want to spend $20 on because that’s not a cheap price point for a magazine, by any means. I think getting it right is something we’re prioritizing but we do have a goal of bi-annual.

TSB: Were you already working on the second issue as you were finishing the first one? Or was it more, “finish one, then start the second”?

Butuso: We knew that once we had an actual, tangible, physical product it would be a lot easier to send around to the people we wanted to have it. Having a product will hopefully help people look at it and say, “oh, this is something I want to be a part of.” So we’re just now starting to do some reach out for the second issue and chugging along on that.

TSB: Not to get too far into business plans, but what’s the goal as far as selling this through your online reach versus having this as a recognizable brand that people pick up and buy in person.

Butuso: We’d love to be in more stores but, kind of like I said before, it’s easier to sell yourself with a physical magazine in hand. The good thing for us is that we have boots on the ground all around the country. We’re going to aim to be a couple places in New York, a couple places in the Bay and then maybe a few more places here [Portland]. Of course, if we accidentally end up in stores in L.A. and Chicago, that’s great too!

TSB: Given that so much of the basketball conversation exists online today and that the aesthetic of the magazine is so different from what you’ll find in print — in a lot of ways it feels like a physical blog, it looks like a website, it reads like a website in a lot of ways (and I mean that as a compliment) — have you thought about how the magazine can contribute, affect or reshape the online conversation?

Butuso: I’m actually really glad to hear you say that. We want it to feel a little bit more fun. You know, this isn’t the Associated Press and we’re not aiming for it to be. I think that a lot of our writers and contributors, and then us five, if you include our social manager, we’re all very online. That’s actually how a good portion of us met — through Twitter and friends on Twitter. So I think speaking to fans who are also very online is only something that can benefit us.

Twitter is where the conversation happens, in terms of sports, and so we totally wanted to be in line with that. At some point, once we’ve grown much more, I think it will evolve into something that also lives online with prime content in the magazine. I see that in the realm of possibility at some point. We basically have a really big emphasis on community and we recognize that our community is very online.

TSB: The idea of a launch party, is that something you’re thinking about too? It’s the third leg of the stool — catching people online, people in person and people with the print magazine?

Butuso: Yeah, we had our launch party here on March 5 and a lot of people came out for that. It was something that really surprised us and something we were really excited about. We’ve been really touched and amazed by how our fanbase definitely shows out online but also in person. That’s exactly how we think about it. You know we make the joke that digital is dead but it’s absolutely not dead and that’s what’s funny about our stickers and our branding. And so we’re definitely trying to capitalize on all three of those, online, print and the real-life stuff too.

TSB: And you still have copies of the first issue available? If people are reading this Q&A and want to check it out?

Butuso: Yes, we sure do!

You can order your copy of the first issue of Flagrant Mag here, and follow on Twitter, @FlagrantMag.