Lessons learned from five years of making Elska Magazine — how to be more polished, and how to appreciate not being polished

Five years ago today I released the very first issue of Elska Magazine — 'Elska Lviv (Ukraine)' — and since then twenty-nine issues, each made in a different city, have been released. Over the years, issue by issue, lessons have been learned, making the Elska of today more cohesive, better designed, and more polished, though still consistently imperfect, which is something I rather like about Elska. Nevertheless, when that first edition came in from the printers I was devastated. I knew nothing of graphic design, so I taught myself how to use InDesign and Photoshop, and just tried my best. But the result was a mess — the cover image was misaligned, the font and spacing were totally wrong, and there were all these badly cropped images (I somehow didn't understand about bleed).

A look at the very first issue of Elska, with that messy cover, on the shelves of some great gay bookshop (sorry, can't remember where)

At the time, I decided to just accept it and release the issue as it was. After all, I couldn't afford to reprint it, and I wasn't confident I could fix the mistakes anyway! To my relief, it caught on in spite of, or maybe partly because of, its shonkiness. I remember meeting a fan of Elska named Miguel, somewhere around the point where ten issues had been published, and he told me that 'Elska Lviv' was his favourite issue. I was shocked that what to me was kind of an embarrassment had actually resonated. He explained how much he appreciated the earnestness and that he found the clumsiness charming. He also loved how it was clearly a handmade project, the result of a regular guy who travelled around meeting and shooting other regular guys, and then published the results honestly.

One early reader who decided to send in a pic of himself reading 'Elska Lviv' at the back of a bus. I still have no idea who he is, where he's from, or if he still reads Elska.

I hadn't really thought of it that way before. I had been ashamed of what I had put out there, but talking to him made me feel proud at last. Still, over time, as I learned more, I decided to give Elska a polish. Even if I could appreciate imperfect pics or stories, there was no need to continue using a font that was difficult to read, to print on a paper stock that too easily got dirty, or to select images that, no matter how much I liked them, just didn't fit the page!

Even as I became more skilled at graphic design, attention to detail, and composition, I think the biggest lesson I've learned over these past five years is to appreciate imperfection. I'm sure that some people laughed when they saw that first edition of Elska, with all its mistakes, but the fact is that some people still laugh at what I produce today. There are some who won't accept that I choose to feature ordinary men instead of models and celebrities, who they deem as "not hot enough" or "not interesting enough" to be 'worthy' of publishing in a magazine. Every single person I feature in my work deserves to be there, regardless of what they look like or what story they choose to tell. Sure, some of them look awkward on camera (they were probably nervous, which is rather cute actually), some of them aren't very good writers (I tend to prefer an authentic voice to carefully crafted prose), and some of the people who choose to pose nude have small dicks (which I like more — big 'sausage cocks' have a proclivity to not work properly anyway!)

The second printing of 'Elska Lviv', nicely polished up compared to the first edition

Last week I was driving myself mad trying to set up some new product shots for the website, you know, photographs of the actual publication so customers get a better idea of what they're buying. Pretty much all the mags out there use faked mockups and Photoshop vectors for their product images. This is the standard, this is what is apparently professional and right. I chose to do the same, but I just hated how it looked. So I decided to stick my middle finger up to professional standards and just put some copies of Elska on a table, arrange a few tchotchkes around them, and snap some pics. The result may not look totally slick, but it looks real and honest, which is something I should be proud of. And if it means I sell less mags, so be it. The sort of person who prefers perfect marketing probably isn't going to like something as imperfect as Elska anyway.

A page torn from 'Elska Lviv', stuck to a post in London, which is something I used to do during bike rides in the city

By the way, the original edition of 'Elska Lviv' had 500 copies printed, though perhaps 200 of these got incinerated — 250 of the copies were given to a UK distributor, and since they only paid for around 50 copies, I assume the others were destroyed. Then, about a year later, I did a full reissue of 'Elska Lviv', using a more cleaned-up design which reflected the quality of Elskas being produced at the time, with another 500 copies printed. These then sold out after around a year.

At the moment I'm wondering if I should do another reissue. Although I still offer an e-version of the original edition, I am a total paperphile, and maybe having the first ever Elska available to buy in print is worth doing. I would clean it up to fit the new format, but it still absolutely would be a little messy! Let me know if you might be interested in buying a copy if I did do a reprint. If enough people are into it, I'll be happy to make it happen

Liam Campbell is editor and chief photographer of Elska Magazine, a project about travelling the world, meeting a bunch of random local guys, and presenting them to readers through honest photography and personal storytelling.