Martin Jenča is a graphic designer in Bratislava who runs a design agency called Büro Milk, curates the By Design Conference, and edits Backstage Talks — a magazine that captures the conversations that happen when the microphones are off, the presentations are over, and someone orders another round at the bar. The distinction matters. On stage, designers deliver polished talks about their work. Backstage, they talk about the decisions that actually shaped it: the budgets, the compromises, the moments of doubt, the business logic behind the creative choices.
First published in 2016 and produced annually alongside the By Design Conference, Backstage Talks is a magazine of dialogues on design and business. Its interview subjects are drawn from the conference's speaker roster — Jessica Walsh, Christoph Niemann, Erik Spiekermann, Erik Kessels, Mirko Borsche, Lance Wyman, Jessica Hische, Mark Porter, Chloe Scheffe — but the conversations are collected in person during the conference weekend and supplemented with commissioned essays and interviews that give each issue a life beyond the event. The themes have evolved from curiosity to empathy to social responsibility, always circling back to the same central question: how can design change business for the better by making things both useful and beautiful?
Jenča, together with executive editor Zuzana Kvetková, has always art-directed the magazine himself — until issue seven, when he handed the design to American editorial designer Chloe Scheffe and deliberately chose not to look at the layouts until they were finished. The result was a visual reinvention that some regular readers initially resisted and that Jenča loved precisely because it surprised him. A magazine about design needs to make use of design, and Backstage Talks has always looked the part, but the Scheffe collaboration gave it a typographic energy and structural boldness that elevated the publication from excellent to essential.
magCulture has described Backstage Talks as a magazine that successfully bridges design and business without the abstract theorising that often accompanies the phrase "design thinking." Its no-nonsense format — A4, perfect-bound, direct in name and intention — reflects a publication that has no interest in mystifying what designers do. It wants to understand how they think, how they approach their work, and how they navigate the messy territory where creativity meets commerce. The By Design Conference ended after its tenth year in 2024, which means the future of Backstage Talks is uncertain. Whatever comes next, eight issues of honest, casual, deeply informed conversations about the life of a designer will remain on shelves long after the bar has closed.
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