Alix has an origin story that only makes sense in the world of indie publishing. For years, a small team in Spain had been producing Staf Magazine — a Spanish-language publication about skateboarding, surfing, punk rock, and the subcultures that orbit around them. It was a labour of love, sold in limited quantities, read by a devoted community. Then one day, the editors of IdN — an internationally respected design publication based in Hong Kong that had been putting out legendary magazines like Colors for years — stumbled across old issues of Staf and made an offer: relaunch it in English, for a global audience, under the IdN umbrella.
The Staf team said no — but not to the idea, only to the name. They did not want to bring Staf back in paper. They wanted something new. What emerged was Alix, co-published as IdN Extra, with the same editorial DNA as Staf but a fresh identity, an English-language audience, and the production resources of an international publisher behind it. The first issue's cover was illustrated by Todd Francis, one of the most iconic artists in skateboard culture, which tells you everything about where Alix positions itself.
The magazine presents the legendary characters of alternative culture alongside the scene newcomers who are constructing whole universes outside the establishment. Because, as the editors put it with characteristic directness, the best things that happen around us are barely visible to the mainstream, and the majority of them never get exposure in the main international showcases. The best things happen in the street and are photographed on corners. They show up in the crest of a wave and are drawn with the blow of a skateboard on the sidewalk. Everything is experienced first-hand — the team insists on immersion, on being there, on reporting from inside the culture rather than observing it from a safe critical distance.
Each issue features a different artist designing the cover, a tradition inherited from Staf. The photography is raw and documentary, the interviews are long-form and unhurried, and the subjects range from surfers to graffiti writers to musicians operating well outside any algorithm's reach. Alix bridges the gap between professional design publishing and the anarchic energy of zine culture — backed by Hong Kong's infrastructure but driven by the Spanish team's decades-long obsession with the subcultures they grew up in. It is the magazine they always dreamed of making, and the fact that it exists because a publisher on the other side of the world recognised its value is one of the more heartwarming stories in independent publishing.