I recently attended a talk by Les Jones all about his amazing magazine 'ELSIE'. I haven't listened to such an interesting and inspiring person in a long time! His whole idea seemed to be taking a whole 'sideways' look on the world. He seemed to love the idea of having his own creative freedom with no one looking over his shoulder or controlling him. He found it sad how all of the popular, mainstream magazines out there at the moment are all so similar, this is something I haven't really noticed until now. All of the independent magazines like ELSIE is where I want to start getting my inspiration from instead of following the crowd and reading the usual girly, fashion magazines that I unfortunately tend to stick to.
ELSIE was set up five years ago in 2011 by Les, he had no agenda, no message to get across, no defined demographic and no one to try and please and I loved that! He did it for him and because he wanted to. Whilst listening to him talk I began to notice what a funny guy he was! His stories were so interesting and eventful. One story in particular stood out to me where he completely put all of his faith in human nature and let his journey unfold naturally with the midset of 'do stuff and other stuff will happen'. He wrote down lots of different countries and put them in a hat for his son to pick one out. He then threw a dart at the map of Poland and ended up in Miechow which was a tiny, quiet town. His stories from here were so interesting from being in the local newspaper to meeting the president of the town! Not only did he have an amazing journey and built friendships with the most unlikely of people, but he also produced brilliant content for his completely unique magazine. He added humour to everything and kept me laughing throughout his talk. His trip is documented in a weird and wonderful way in ELSIE issue #1 which I will definitely be getting my hands on soon!
Another wacky thing Les told us about is his obsession with picking up random pieces of paper off the floor as he is always so curious, I love how he is fascinated with such mundane objects, he seems to make everything interesting. He showed us a few examples through his presentation of shopping lists, letters and drawings which were all hilarious but interesting at the same time, it really made me wonder who these useless pieces of paper once belonged to. From discarded gloves to Flattened face cans, Les Jones has it all in his crazy magazines and I cannot wait to get my hands on them! I definitely recommend getting your hands on ELSIE magazine as he only makes 1000 of each copy, they are all unique and completely done by Les himself, no one else!
Thankyou for reading,
Love from Georgia
xxx
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