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Inside Go Home PrintA

lthough both are only in their early twenties,Shanley Maguire and Emma Sharpe are alreadydedicated to print. Maguire, 21, a native of

Calgary, Alberta, is only two years into her four-yearGraphic Communications Management program atToronto’s Ryerson University. Sharpe, 24, a Torontonative, recently graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD,

Halifax). Together they launched, co-own, andmanage their own Toronto-based enterprise calledGo Home Print, whose main activity is publishingGo Home Magazine, a publication which has justreleased its third issue in June 2013. I caught up to both young women to learn more about theiractivities and the thought process behind their recent ventures.

Creative beginningsMaguire and Sharpe first met in Toronto via aCraigslist posting that led to the two of them becom-ing roommates for a couple of years. They partedways briefly, but eventually found themselves back together again socially during the winter of 2012(Maguire’s first year at Ryerson), when they brain-stormed about the possibility of a shared creative endeavour. As their plans for a mutual project devel-oped, they moved back into shared quarters andbegan working from the studio they set up in the hall-way of their apartment.

“After talking about my academic program, we decided we wanted to start doing something together – anything to get started,” recalls Maguire.By summer 2012 they had decided on a name for theirenterprise and purchased the domain name for aWebsite. “But we didn’t actually launch the magazineuntil November 2012 because it took us a long timeto figure out exactly what we wanted to do and whereto focus,” continues Maguire.

A return to print“As our plans took shape, one of the things we realizedwas that we wanted to invest more time to create a

better product, not just a photocopy, but a higher-quality printed production,” says Maguire.

Sharpe continues: “Although we’re very awareof the digital age, we made a conscious decision

to go into print. We want to embrace tangiblethings like books, photographs shot withfilm, bookbinding, and screen printing.

“Our idea is creating small-run, high-qualityproducts, rather than mass-produced digitalones. Instead of trying to get a foot intothe oversaturated digital market, we areriding a niche wave and trying to createa new approach. To some extent it’s abacklash of artists coming together topreserve traditional methods that are dis-appearing now. Many people will nevertire of the feeling of holding a printedbook or a magazine in their hands. We

want to reach out to people who don’twant to get everything from their iPhones.”

A “lost” generation goes homeThe name they chose for their enterprise, GoHome Print, is a reference to Sharpe’s familycottage on Go Home Lake in Ontario’sMuskoka region. Maguire liked the name because “it’s short and sweet, sounds cool andsort of cheeky, it’s recognizable, and it also creates a feeling of nostalgia.” For both, theidea of returning home refers to the return toanalogue printing, as well as the return of theirown generation of twenty-somethings, whichthey describe as “wandering”, or even “lost”,from the tangible creative enterprise.

Shanley Maguire is entering her third year at Ryerson University's four-year GraphicCommunications Managementprogram, from which she received support in starting Go Home Print.

PRINTACTION • AUGUST 2013

Emma Sharpe is a graduate from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University

where she specialized in film photography before helping to co-found Go Home Print

in Toronto.

Continued

Photo: Charles Yao

“We’re a really weirdgeneration,” says Maguire.“A lot of us don’t havevery defined paths be-cause of the way our education systems areset up. It’s a generationthat sometimes needshelp and a voice.

“Go Home Magazineis intended to help [ourpeers] by showcasingtheir artwork. We’re interested in reachingout to artists of ourown generation whowill probably never get a chance to bepublished by a bigger publishing com-pany and who don’t know a lot aboutgetting things published. We want tohelp turn their ideas for things like nov-els and photobooks into a reality byprinting and promoting them.

“We want to bring people togetherthrough collaboration, as well as bring-ing their work together physically in themagazine,” continues Maguire. “A mag-azine is actually just like a literal, tangi-ble compilation of a bunch of differentpeople. So that’s sort of what we wantedto do to pull together the people andtheir creativity to make an actual thingyou could hold in your hands at the endof the day.”

While studying for her interdiscipli-nary Fine Arts degree at NSCAD,Sharpe concentrated mostly on ana-logue photography using traditionalfilm versus digital technology and at-tempted collaborative work in a lot ofdifferent media. After graduating, Sharpestarted doing research in an effort to fig-ure out how to put what she had learnedat art school into practice. Her collabo-ration with Maguire brought balancebecause, “The approach I learned at artschool is more conceptual and involvesthings like creative writing and curatingand managing a large pool of content.”By contrast, Shanley provides a huge organizational force, because her Ryer-son program not only teaches her aboutthe technical aspects of printing, prepress, and finishing, but also the

financial, sales, and management aspectsof running a business.”

Maguire adds Ryerson has also beenhelpful by providing a strong supportsystem and a wide variety of resourcesfor their enterprise, including facultywho can help answer her business ques-tions when they arise and provide refer-rals to numerous bursaries for whichyoung entrepreneurs are eligible to apply.

Go Home Print’s operationThe hallmarks of Go Home Print’s oper-ation include extreme receptiveness toother people’s creativity and the staunchpursuit of collaboration over competi-tive approaches (which they reject as pre-tentious.)

“Working together makes us allstronger,” explains Sharpe. “We attractyoung artists who are supportive of one another and we’re excited by theopportunity to showcase other people’stalents.”

In their quest to connect with othercreative minds, Maguire and Sharpe regularly attend and support art shows,launches, and other events in local artis-tic, photographic, crafts, comics, zines(noncommercial, often homemade oronline publications, usually devoted to specialized or unconventional sub-jects), and other independent publishingcommunities.

To fund the production of their mag-azine, Go Home Print also produces avariety of edgy printed branding mer-chandise, all custom designed by various

A selection of Go Home Print's custom-designed inserts, posters, tote bags, and buttons.

Maguire and Sharpe selling magazines and brandingmerchandise at a community event.

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collaborating artists, including stickers, cam-paign-style buttons,patches, t-shirts, tanktops, tote bags, photo-graphic prints, post-cards, and postersfeaturing materialfrom their magazine.(Their tote bag linequickly sold out of aproduct designed byCody Swinkels thatread “Go Home andMake Shit”, while onlya few samples remain of Rhodi Iliadou’sGo Big or Go Home and Kerry Maguire’sGo Home and Read a Book designs.) Al-though Maguire and Sharpe have al-ready invested over $2,000 each of theirown money to support the magazine(cash they earned mainly from workingin coffee shops), their goal is to earnback enough money from magazine andmerchandise sales to meet costs plus dobigger and better things with each issue.

Thus far they have succeeded in effect-ing incremental improvements: Theirfirst issue contained only photography;the second issue expanded to includepoems, illustrations, and short writings.And in contrast to their first two issues,their latest third issue incorporates morecolour and a greater variety of stocks andproduction methods, including offset,toner-based, and Risograph – a processthey chose specifically because it con-tributes a more “handmade, artisticlook.” A 64-page compilation of writing,interviews, photography, illustration, de-sign, and collages by over 30 youthfulcontributors, their third issue sells for$15.

Maguire told a videographer from TheEyeopener, Ryerson’s student newspaper:“The most challenging thing for us ismeeting our printing costs. To actuallycreate 250 copies of a magazine is notcheap, because we choose to take thework to established printing housesrather than doing it ourselves. Peopledon’t realize how much printing costs.The retail price per magazine for our firstissue was $6 and for the second one itwas $9. Now that we’re charging $15 forthe third issue, people think it’s kind of

outrageous, butthat’s what print-ing costs are.”

Thanks totheir wideningnetwork of con-tacts, they havepreviously soldthe magazine onconsignment atindependent bookstores, comicstores, and otherretail locations asremote as Glasgow,San Francisco,

Chicago, Vancouver, Halifax, Calgary,and Montreal. More recently, for finan-cial reasons and also because they preferto support the local economy and busi-nesses, they have decided to limit sales tothe geographically closer locations andthe Website Magpile (an online commu-nity that enables independent magazineproducers to set up an e-storefront).Maguire and Sharpe are also considering a

switch to producing the magazine biannu-ally instead of quarterly in order to focuson as many other collaborative projects aspossible beyond the magazine.

Relying on social media Besides their own Website, Go HomePrint’s main marketing channels consistentirely of social media: Facebook, Twit-ter, Instagram, Tumblr, plus self-promo-tion videos on Vimeo and YouTube.

Maguire explains: “Social media is thebest way to build up your business andget people to believe in you. Before wehad any product or created the first issue,we had already established an identityand a history for ourselves through socialmedia. Although our activities are focus-ing on traditional print, our use of social media is the one way we are embracing the modern digital age.”

Despite this slight paradox in method-ology, Maguire and Sharpe are emergingas compelling evangelists for print totheir own generation.

ca.linkedin.com/in/vicg8

@vicg8

vicg8.blogspot.ca

Maguire and Sharpe, with Rhodi Iliadou, Senior Designer and Art Director of GoHome Print, promote the inaugural issue of Go Home Magazine.

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AUGUST 2013 • PRINTACTION