From little acorns – how two men created Nutmeg, read and revered across Scotland and beyond
Seasonally since September 2016, come rain, shine or summer tournament, Daniel Gray, Ally Palmer and cohorts in thrall to the Scottish game produce Nutmeg, “an engrossing blend of opinion, nostalgia and insight”.
Weighing in at nearly 200 pages eagerly digested by some 2,000 subscribers, Nutmeg believes in the power of the printed word and captivating photograph, currently accompanied by podcasts, video clips and in-person events.
Issue 34 covered Ayr United’s capricious campaign, Morton 150 years on and Johan Cruyff’s hitherto secret affiliation with Dumbarton FC. Treasure of a similar nature will be sprinkled throughout issue 35 due for publication in March 2025.
Libero pulls up a barstool with Dan and Ally to hear how Nutmeg came about and where they find its wealth of seasonal stories.
Ally Palmer: I’d been working for many years as a newspaper design consultant, but that work was starting to dry up as publishers moved resources away from print to online content. I’d always been interested in creating something myself, so I decided to bring together my love of design, typography and Scottish football to create a print publication.
In the same way that vinyl was seeing a resurgence in the music industry, there were still people who enjoyed the look, feel and smell of print.
Independent magazines were flourishing and I was able to get advice from other editors and publishers who were happy to explain areas of the business that I had zero experience in. And concentrating on subscriptions rather than newsstand sales meant it was viable on a small scale.
Another motivation was the fact that Rangers and Celtic dominate the mainstream media in Scotland. Newspapers, who pre-internet would cover the game more extensively, were now concentrating on clicks and therefore, understandably, would publish stories about the Old Firm every day at the expense of almost everyone else. Nutmeg was set up to treat every team equally. So a great tale about Cowdenbeath was just as worth telling as one about either of the Glasgow giants.
In March 2016, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to see if there would be any interest in what we were proposing. All that existed at that point was the logo and a list of typical articles we might publish. We reached our target within a couple of weeks and this meant we had around 420 people pledging to support Nutmeg, and help finance an online shop and the printing of the first issue later that September.
Ally: I came across a small format Swedish magazine called Offside and thought straight away that this was something that could work for Scottish football. But it had high production values, with lots of photography and illustrations which would have made it difficult to do with a small team.
When The Blizzard launched in 2011, I was immediately taken by its approach to long-form writing with little or no illustration. I saw this as a format that I could produce myself, working with a team of like-minded contributors.
Dan: Although Ally and I are from different generations (sorry, Ally!), we both grew up loving print – chiefly magazines, whether football or music. As a kid, I always spent my pocket money on Shoot! and 90 Minutes, then later When Saturday Comes. I often used to make up my own football magazines too, with terrible drawings of players, match reports and league tables.
So being involved with producing an actual football magazine is one of very few childhood ambitions I’ve fulfilled. (I’m still waiting for Middlesbrough to ask me to play centre-half.)
Libero: Can you say a few words about the main people behind the project and your background?
Ally: My background is in newspaper and magazine design, having worked as an art director at national titles in Scotland, and as a design consultant for newspapers around the world. I’ve been an Ayr United supporter all my life, and still travel across Scotland for home games.
Dan: I’m a writer by trade, with books published on various football and non-football topics, and articles in a number of newspapers and magazines. I’ve also done a fair bit of broadcasting on television, radio and podcasts. I moved up to Scotland in my early twenties and fell for the game here. It made me feel at home. I began as a Nutmeg writer, then became deputy editor before Ally handed me the editor’s chair, cigar and trilby hat – well, the Google docs log-in and bobble hat.
Libero: Since you started out, print has been going the way of the football rattle. Were you ever worried that you would have to switch completely to digital or do your core subscribers keep the turnstiles ticking round?
Ally: Print has always been our passion and it will always be at the core of what we do, but we have of course looked at ways to manage digital content. We were never keen to simply give away content online (though we have made some sold out issues available), but equally unsure about introducing digital-only subscriptions.
So in August this year, we started producing unique digital content via the Substack app. This involved moving our podcasts to that platform and publishing two or three articles each week.
Subscriptions are currently free but we will introduce a paid level soon and move some of that content behind a paywall. In the meantime, print subscriptions are growing slowly and hopefully our increased digital presence will help with brand awareness which has always been an issue for us.
Dan: I don’t completely buy the idea that print is breathing its last before an inevitable death. There is room for quality paper products at a reasonable price, and that’s what Nutmeg is. And, there are many thousands of people who desperately want to get away from incessant screen time and relax with a coffee or beer and lose themselves in print. There are no annoying pop-up ads in a magazine!
We take great pleasure when readers mention their joy at Nutmeg falling through the letterbox or send images of themselves reading an issue in the pub or on holiday.
Libero: 34 issues, special editions, many pages to fill – how easy is it to find new subjects every quarter?
Ally: I thought it might be a struggle to find new stories and many people we spoke to at the start thought the same. But we’ve built a pool of contributors who are constantly pitching ideas which means we often have to hold over articles.
Dan: Probably 80% of our articles at least (and we have 30-plus in every issue) come from writers’ ideas – we don’t have to suggest much. The pedigree of Scotland’s football history and culture means there will always be good stories which look backwards; the ever-changing landscape makes for good stories looking at where we are now and where the game is going.
Libero: How has Nutmeg changed and developed since 2016 – also in terms of your readership – and what plans do you have for the future?
Ally: For the first few years it hardly changed at all. The cover was simply a large numeral and minimal coverlines. To be honest, this was another part of the production that made it simpler for me to design on my own. It also happened to look good. But we realised that emphasising the issue number might put off people who had come to us late. So, once we reached issue 30 we decided, after a lot of discussion within our small editorial group, to introduce a photo on the cover. The large numeral survives on the back cover.
In terms of content, that has evolved slowly along with Dan’s involvement. We met just before it was launched and Dan agreed to write a short piece on the art of the nutmeg. It was the first page in the first edition and he still writes that ‘Welcome’ piece today.
Dan also introduced me to his friend, Alan McCredie, who is a photographer. They had collaborated on projects before and we agreed to have a regular Nutmeg photo essay. As mentioned earlier, the Nutmeg format is ideal for text though not so well suited for photography. But over the years we’ve introduced more images, not only Alan’s but by other brilliant photographers and illustrators.
We’re putting a lot of time and effort into our new digital content as we see this as another way to raise awareness of Nutmeg and hopefully encourage more print subscriptions.
Dan: If you look back over the issues, there is certainly a lot more photography and illustration now. That came from our desire to slowly evolve the magazine so it never became regimented, but also because readers asked for a little more by way of imagery.
In terms of the future, our aims remain the same: to tell quality stories that showcase the wonderful, maddening world of Scottish football.
Nutmeg is available by subscription for £12/every 3 months, £42/year.