Victory Journal

Brooklyn-based creative agency Doubleday & Cartwright is like that really smart kid at school that you one day find out is also really good at kung-fu. By which I mean alongside their growing portfolio of quality work, they also produce an in-house sports journal that is quite literally breathtaking – more than one of the It’s Nice That team gasped while we perused their latest offering. With stunning photography and uncommonly good writing, it’s a thing of sheer class and beauty. Oh, and it has a “spiritual advisor” listed in the colophon. Victory is quite simply, a triumph.

Max Vogel, one of Doubleday’s artistic directors told It’s Nice That: "Victory Journal is the new refuge of the true sportsman. Unmoved by statistical analysis and provincial opionating, Victory is concerned with the eternal glories and ignominies of players and pursuits the world over.

“Calling on an elite roster of like-minded contributors, Victory provides a forum for work that is unapologetically enthusiastic and uncompromisingly personal. It speaks to an audience that like its architects can distinguish the enduring from the fleeting and is ruled, above all, by an irrepressible curiosity.”

Issue Three For Love or Money features a photoessay on the brilliantly barmy nautical jousting, an interview with Cheryl Dunn and a collection of her mesmerising photographs of the boxing world, a chat with gravity-defying tightrope walker Philippe Petit, a pictorial piece on Saratoga racetrack and an article on the El Cortez casino in Las Vegas.

This eclectic content is allowed to shine thanks to bold, simple design which prioritises powerful pictures and gives them space to be fully absorbed. Anyone planning to launch a sports journal should get their hands on a copy of Victory to see how it should be done.