Unity Magazine – Issue 1 – July 1996

     

Unity

Contributors: Jenny Logue, Matt King, Paul Rickelton

 “Before Unity there was only a very small group of inline skaters in The UK. At that time the only information you could get on the latest tricks came from Daily Bread or ‘Hoax’ videos. Social Media back then was hanging out in the skate shop, there was no Facebook, whatsapp or Instagram. The only UK magazine was Skatermag, which covered old style rollerboots, hockey and some inline skating. We knew the Skatermag guys well and Lee and I did a couple of shoots for them as we are both from a photography background.

I remember the pivotal moment clearly, it was a Saturday morning in the flat we shared, Lee and I were talking about the skate scene and we came up with this idea of doing a pull out in Skatermag. We were talking about how we could influence inline skating in the UK and use our creative skills to come up with a concept that would appeal. I called Skatermag up with the suggestion, our only major request was that we wanted to drive the style and content. Skatermag accepted our proposal and Unity was born. The initial team was Lee, Slack, Marcos and Rob, we did it all, photos writing designing…we learnt as we went along and improved with each issue.

This was a huge turning point for the UK inline skating scene, Unity connected people, created interest in the sport and helped fuel the industry. One of our early approaches was to get out of London and show the Skate scene from across the country and that really paid off. The popularity of Unity grew with each issue, we started asking for more pages, the publisher could see the interest growing and it was an easy decision to progress to a standalone magazine.

It was hard work, we did this part time after our day jobs, travelling every weekend, shooting, writing and designing in the evenings. We’re all incredibly proud of what we achieved, Unity was a major influence on the UK scene”

– Paul Rickelton (Slack)

 

 

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