In this Fresh Perspective, Kierian Cameron, founding editor of printed publication, Brand Cult, reimagines print as a shared experience and discusses how it can help bring people together in an increasingly online world Print Needs a Social Life There’s no doubt that everyone loves print, but if we want print to survive then we have to keep reinventing the role it plays in people’s lives. For those of us making publications, that means thinking about the relationships we can build around them and giving people a reason to pick them up and spend time with them when so much else is competing for their attention. An Unlikely Route into Print Despite growing up as an avid reader and fan of magazines in the 90s, I never imagined a career in print. Instead, I moved to New York City and worked as a psychiatric nurse, after divorcing my FBI husband and winning the lottery (perhaps, a story for another time). I then moved to Hong Kong, where I studied for a post-graduate in education and set up my first business, an education company that grew to six figures through only word of mouth. When the pandemic-which-shallnot-be-named hit, education went online and I made the move back to the UK. But continuing to teach in London quickly dulled my spark. Instead, I found myself addicted to Canva and designing more and more print projects. Flyers, educational worksheets, business cards, and after some unofficial YouTube training, and failed attempts at getting a job as a graphic designer I decided to set up a new business. Now, you’re wondering what this all has to do with print, right? Well, the idea for a newspaper grew out of a problem I was trying to solve for myself. Unlike the organic growth of my education company, my design (and now media agency) House of Cult Brands, was struggling. I had no clients or even a portfolio. I needed to learn everything from the bottom up: how to sell, market, price, and grow a business. But all the business information I found online was never the whole story. I learned the hard way, that you can’t learn how to run a business from hashtags, captions, or a questionable amount of free downloaded lead magnets. I knew I wanted to learn from founders whose experiences I could relate to, with honest stories of the decisions they had made and advice I could actually use. Traditional businesses newspapers didn’t fill that gap either. No hate to The Financial Times, but you’ll only read about who had a great Q1 or which Forbes 30U30 was at court for embezzlement. It was that gap in my knowledge of business that led me to the gap in the market that then inspired me to create Brand Cult, an award-winning, print-only business newspaper for founders who want to read the whole story without the digital fatigue. Finding Our People To be honest, in this digital era, we’ve made it incredibly easy to reach people. But along the way, we’ve also forgotten how to connect and build relationships. That’s why I think print’s future lies in publications that know exactly who they are for and create a community outside of their publication. For example, Brand Cult is for business owners, Gardeners’ World is for, yup, you guessed it, gardeners. That shared interest gives us somewhere to start, especially readers recognise their own ambitions and frustrations in the pages. But to keep print alive, we need to build on that by giving readers opportunities to find each other, share what they’ve learned, and form relationships beyond the page. It really feels like a full-circle moment, after moving so much of our lives online, ▲ [L to R] Lord Black of Brentwood with Kierian Cameron at the Printing Charity's Rising Star Awards 19 www.printmonthly.co.uk Issue 363 - November | December 2026 FRESH PERSPECTIVES | KIERIAN CAMERON
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