Viktorija Pashuta, the founder, CEO,  and editor in chief of  BASIC magazine, left her home country, Latvia, with a little book that she started writing her ideas in it at age 11. Her dream was that one day she would create all the ideas in that book.  One of the ideas must have been BASIC magazine: an upscale magazine that is anything but basic.

Also an award-winning director and film maker, Viktorija Pashuta launched BASIC magazine seven years ago in Los Angeles as “a print platform for artists from all over the world to express themselves and give them the opportunity to share their artwork and their passions on the pages of the print magazine.”

I was so impressed by the quality of the magazine and the way it has progressed since its launch. Flipping through the pages of BASIC was like taking a first-class trip around the world, luscious photography accompanied by imaginative design and complemented by beautiful typography. It is a delight for both the eye and the brain.

A photographer by profession, Ms. Pashuta is also a writer who combines the art of audio-visual writing to her editorials that introduce every issue of the magazine.  She is a dreamer and she is more than willing to share her dreams with you. When I asked her what she would be doing if I stop by unannounced, she told me that, “sometimes you could catch me doing something weird like I imagine I’m a batman and I’ll go outside in the dark streets and just walk around at night and there would be someone who needs my help randomly.”

It was hard to separate her drive for life and adventure from her passion and zeal for BASIC magazine.  So, please join me with this wonderful conversation with Viktorija Pashuta, founder, CEO and editor in chief of BASIC magazine.  But first, the soundbites:

On why print: “I’m really proud that BASIC is actually in print, not in digital…It was really important to create a physical product, a magazine that has the presence in the physical world.”

On how to do print today: “The idea was to invest in the quality of the paper, invest in the quality of binding, invest in talent, create content that is timeless and you wouldn’t easily find online.”

On the challenges of creating a magazine: “If I knew then what I had to go through, I’d probably think twice if I should start a print magazine…it’s not enough just to have the funds. You also have to be extremely passionate about it and live with it.”

More on challenges of creating a magazine: “There were definitely challenges creating content that would resonate online and also would be relevant in print because these are two complete different platforms.”

On sources of revenue: “I created different avenues with the product placement that we utilize the smaller brands and provided them additional value by creating unique organic content for them within the pages of the magazine.

On appearing on the cover of the magazine: “That actually was very unplanned and I’m a person that would never put myself on a cover because I thought that’s sort of abusing your power.”

More on appearing on the cover of the magazine: “I thought if you use yourself as the main inspiration I think it will give inspiration for other people to believe in themselves and keep going with whatever ventures they enter.”

On finding the BASIC DNA: “We’re trying to shape our own voice which I think was the hardest thing and I think for any brand it’s really hard to stand out in the crowd so that’s kind of our goal been to find our DNA, to find BASIC  DNA and to really stick to it and be authentic.”

On her life’s philosophy: “The most talented people are very humble and they don’t really want to push themselves. The loudest people on social media are usually the least talented.”

More on her life’s philosophy: “I’m a hardcore fan of the cat woman, so I believe being behind the scenes and being that savior for those who cannot speak for themselves and elevate people. I would love to do more charity work. I would love to help more people.”

And now for the lightly edited conversation with Viktorija Pashuta, founder and editor in chief of BASIC magazine:

Samir Husni: As I told you in my email BASIC is anything but BASIC. Tell me the elevator pitch. What is BASIC magazine?

Viktorija Pashuta: Well, BASIC, first of all, it’s my passion project.

This is something I’ve been craving and wanted to do since I was in high school. And pretty much it’s a platform that provides opportunity for artists from all over the world to express themselves and to give them that opportunity to share their artwork and their passions on the pages of print magazine. And I’m really proud that BASIC is actually in print, not in digital.

So we take pride creating such a publication that became sort of a coffee table book and collectible edition. So yeah, like you said, absolutely right. BASIC is everything but BASIC.

Samir Husni: You wrote that while others are abandoning print and are going digital, and with the high increase of paper costs, mailing costs, you name it. Why is this print drive that you have?

Viktorija Pashuta: Well, I think I believe that nowadays there is such a high demand for interpersonal connections, for physical products, for physical touch, especially in our modern age of technology and of desensitization of the society, of people not being willing to connect in person or they really craving to have personal interpersonal experiences. So for me, it was really important to create a physical product, a magazine that has the presence in the physical world.

Besides that, I believe that the pages transcend the experiences that we go through creating the magazine. What’s really important is being on set, creating a community, working with passionate people with the same interests and sharing those passions with the world through the print publication. I’ve noticed that trend, especially being myself constantly on social media, that you have those two, three seconds to look at the post, like the post and you forget about it.

But the beauty about print publication, it’s something you look through, but then you put it in a shelf, you can get back to it later. You can look through it and you have this connection that digital can never substitute.

I always have a comparison. Would you like to have a digital kiss or a physical, actual kiss? And the same with print. We want that interpersonal connection. It’s very similar to the luxury sector where we want to have luxury products, luxury experiences, and the same with print.

The idea was to invest in the quality of the paper, invest in the quality of binding, invest in talent, create content that is timeless and you wouldn’t easily find online. So that was the goal. And for me, it was extremely important to create a physical product and have basic in print.

Samir Husni: It sounds like you have had in the last seven years since you launched BASIC, a walk in the old garden, or was there some challenges, there were some thorns across the road?

Viktorija Pashuta: Oh, absolutely. I mean, every step of the way, there was a challenge starting from the fact that when I was getting myself into print, I had zero knowledge in publishing, zero knowledge in printing, zero knowledge in logistics.

All I knew is photography since I started to be a fashion photographer and experience in writing since I was writing back in my country for another smaller magazine. That’s all I had. And then if I knew then what I had to go through, I’d probably think twice if I should start a print magazine.

I thought, oh my God, it’s so easy. I’m going to do it. But then once you start doing it and you realize how huge of an undertaking it is from looking for clients and advertisers, looking for cover stars, being on top of current affairs and finding the budgets for the productions and finding the right team, the passionate, loyal team that would have the same vision as you have or be willing to bring your vision to life.

So all of these things are very, very complex. Even people and companies with unlimited budget would consider having a print magazine quite an undertaking. So it’s not enough just to have the funds.

You also have to be extremely passionate about it and live with it. So I live BASIC. I live 24-7 with the publication, with the ideas, with the concepts, with the things we need to do with the project.

Definitely there were some challenges. There were challenges on many levels, on the production level, to really build the team, to have the right team to support me, to support the vision, to find the funds to run the publication since the magazine is fully self-funded. And I can talk a little bit more about that,  and different avenues, how we monetize the publication, how we keep it alive.

There were definitely challenges creating content that would resonate online and also would be relevant in print because these are two complete different platforms. And something that goes for print would necessarily go viral online and vice versa. If you take an influencer that has millions of followers online and put them in print, it’s going to completely contradict itself and not going to resonate with the audience who loves the fresh print, who loves to read something more meaningful and in-depth with the in-depth research.

Those are two different things were really hard to blend, but I managed to do it. I started it with the viral project, blending my photography and having a concept that resonated both online and in print. That concept was what if cars were supermodels.

I took different types of cars like a Tesla, a Toyota,  and a Ferrari. I imagined what they would look like if they were supermodels. So that concept went viral right away. We got so many, like almost billion impressions online and so many different magazines picked it up and translated to different languages. And for print, it also was a really good artistic series. So things like that are used to sort of be relevant in the digital time, but also print relevant, you know, in modern times.

Samir Husni:  How do you monetize BASIC?

Viktorija Pashuta: Very interesting question, because in my mind, the traditional advertising didn’t work. Something that worked maybe 10, 15 years ago when you have a full page of  a luxury brand, it wouldn’t work for BASIC because  we didn’t have the right numbers for the advertisers.

We didn’t have the right quantities in the beginning. We didn’t have enough celebrity power at the time. So in order to survive, we had to be creative. We had to be resourceful.  I created different avenues with the product placement that we utilize the smaller brands and provided them additional value by creating unique organic content for them within the pages of the magazine.

So we started to get that product and integrate the product within our editorials, within our articles, within the special projects that we were creating, at the same time, giving the brand so much more value than they would have gotten in a digital, I mean, in the traditional media, just having a one page ad, they would get traction, they would get word of mouth, they would get new original content that they in turn would use on their social media pages.

That was one of the things that we utilize is the product placement.
Secondly, we started to create specific targeted projects for brands that would increase the brand awareness and create content that will resonate with the image of the brand. So we take a suitcase company brand and we create a series of imagery that would support that brand.

For example, we work with a Taiwanese brand of suitcases called Desenio and their series were based on the Marvel Comic-Con heroes like Hulk and Captain America and Black Panther. We took those suitcases and I reimagined them as a female superheroes because traditionally in the Comic-Con world, all these characters were played by male characters. So I took a female Black Panther, I took a female Hulk, I took a female Captain America and then we utilized through fashion a series of works for them holding the suitcase in the photo shoot series that also became viral and we actually got the word of the ads of the world website for that campaign also printed and that both got viral digitally.

In addition, we diversified our revenue streams by utilizing additional activations that supported the magazine non-directly like organizing events, creating a production company that would create social media content for brands. We created a fashion showroom that represents fashion designers and provide press placements for those designers.

We had different revenue streams also connected to entertainment, fashion and content creation but non-directly they all were supporting BASIC magazine and all under the Basic Media Company umbrella and that really helped us to keep going and help us to succeed. That doesn’t mean we don’t want traditional advertising, we want it but at the same time that challenge pushed us to be more creative and find new non-traditional ways to monetize our operations.

Samir Husni: It sounds like more than a love affair with BASIC for you,  yet at the same time it’s one of the rare moments that I see the editor-in-chief herself on the cover of the magazine. Tell me about that.

Viktorija Pashuta: Yes, that actually was very unplanned and I’m a person that would never put myself on a cover because I thought that’s sort of abusing your power.  But for that specific issue it was very challenging to find a cover star.  It was the 20th issue of BASIC. The stars that were suggested to us from publicists didn’t really match my aesthetic or they didn’t really were in line with the grandeur of the matter because it was a 20th issue. I wanted to do something special, none of the stars really kind of match that idea .My sister suggested, “that since it’s our 20th issue why don’t you put yourself on a cover and have your team inside of the magazine.”

I said no.  I mean that would be too much. I would never really do that.  Why would I do this? She said well it makes sense because you  are the only photographer and the editor in chief. You are the visioner of the magazine that’s out there.  Even Anna Wintour editor in chief of Vogue didn’t invent Vogue but you did. So I thought maybe that is something interesting to explore and also with my own story I can inspire other people specifically other women because I do have a quite big female following that always admire my journey and admire my tenacity and they know how difficult it is so that was a testament to the team and to myself.  I thought okay if you cannot inspire yourself how can you inspire the world.  I thought if you use yourself as the main inspiration , it will give inspiration for other people to believe in themselves and keep going with whatever ventures they enter.

Samir Husni: Well, your sister was right.

Viktorija Pashuta: I hope so. She’s always my secret advisor and, to have a little confession, most of the time she helps me with my editor’s letter.  She has a very interesting perspective on things.

Samir Husni: You and I are having the same conversation in 2025. What would you tell me you’ve accomplished in the 24-25 year for BASIC?

Viktorija Pashuta: I think we made such a huge leap even right now. Look back at the first issues of the magazine. I’ve seen how different we’ve transformed since issue one and I also think it’s deeply connected to my own personal transformation. Certain things that interested me seven years ago no longer interested me now. As far as I grow personally and I transform personally so does the magazine. I feel we’ve done so much but also so little in my mind within the seven years. I always had these grand goals. I thought by this time we would become such a huge media company with huge following and it would have a very huge impact, but we’re not there yet. At the same time

I learned that no matter how big you become or no matter how successful you become you will never truly be satisfied with what you have and I think that’s a good thing that will always keep you pushing because once you feel like you’ve done it all and if you accomplish it all this stagnation period starts and you kind of start degrade and I always say the same about Oscar winning actors I feel like when DiCaprio won that Oscar he kind of slowed down. I always kind of wanted him not to win that Oscar because you know he’s going to push more, do more movies, do something more mind-blowing and keep growing as an actor so the same thing for me. I feel like even though I’m so close of being big but at the same time it always keeps pushing me to do better.

Looking back if we’re talking in 2025  I think we’ve done some really great accomplishments. We had quite a few renowned stars from Megan Fox to David Guetta to Michelle Rodriguez to Bebe Rex. All these really amazing personalities in music, film, and art world. So it’s been really great to have those celebrities.

I think we did quite a shift, especially for the past few issues, having more written content as before. In the beginning stages of BASIC we started highly as a visual publication. We had a lot of editorials, a lot of artworks, but we didn’t have a lot of articles. Right now we started to have more in-depth interviews. A little more articles, a little more research, a little more data, that we’re trying to get a little bit more a point of view, and trying to shape that BASIC identity.

We’re trying to shape our own voice which I think was the hardest thing and I think for any brand it’s really hard to stand out in the crowd so that’s kind of our goal been to find our DNA, to find BASIC  DNA and to really stick to it and be authentic

 I have a lot things to share but looking back I think we’ve done a lot of immersive projects, a lot of interesting events, which right now is my priority. My goal is to not also have a beautiful publication, but to create a community outside of the magazine, and that’s been my focus.  As of right now I want to involve more projects supporting artists, supporting female founders, supporting emerging musicians, emerging student designers. For me I really want to be the voice for those who cannot really speak.

The most talented people are very humble and they don’t really want to push themselves. The loudest people on social media are usually the least talented. I want to shift that dynamic and give the platform for the truly talented people who don’t really have crazy presence on social media but they have something to say and they have some beautiful artwork that they’ve been working the whole life.

That’s my goal, that’s my passion, and looking back I feel we’ve done a lot, but I want to do more.

Samir Husni:  Before I ask my typical last two questions is there any question I failed to ask  or anything you would like to add.

Viktorija Pashuta: Interesting question. If you allow me just to kind of philosophize, I always feel that I want to judge myself . I feel, as any artist, there is always an internal struggle and sometimes people became too much consumed by consuming things right there’s so much choice and there’s so much pressure to be successful and to create, create, create and sometimes we kind of lose ourselves in that process and we lose ourselves. Why are we doing these things, what’s the purpose?

For me, it’s been a continuous journey to find myself and to find my voice, but also to be silent and listen more to those who have something to say so with the magazine. Maybe the question would be how individuals, who stand behind this smaller passionate project, how do they really keep that positive mindset that allows them to keep motivating themselves every day and keep continuing doing what they do because it’s not easy.  

It’s always challenging. You always have this black and white stripes every day, you want to give up one day and the another day like no I’m doing something right. I want to continue because you feel there’s a feedback, and another day just like why am I doing all this.  There’s so much already out there I just might just stop and get an eight to five job and just be happy and travel.  But this is what I think really makes it so different for BASIC because despite all these challenges and the pains and the hurts you still persevere and still keep moving, still keep creating, because you know that’s through these pains you create something new, you make a difference, you inspire someone else and keep the planet going.

You keep grinding that wheel and you are not willing to settle and just take the easy path. I guess that would be my comment to your question,

Samir  Husni:  If I come to visit Viktorija one evening unannounced, what do I catch you doing cooking, watching tv, reading a book, reading a magazine?

Viktorija Pashuta: A good question. It depends on the day. I taught myself on the thought that I do live in my own bubble. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing to be so disconnected from the rest of the world.  If you come into my house you probably will see me doing either two things: one either watching a super dark bloody thriller or a documentary. I really love dark documentaries and research about unsolved crimes and cold cases.  I’m really passionate about that mystery and that enigma of those cases and trying to find what happened and who done it.

The second thing you may find me doing is spending time in silence. Having some candles on, having some essential oils, and just maybe dancing in the dark. I love dancing, I love connecting to myself through movement and I think it’s very important to move in general in your life with your mind physically emotionally being out there.

Sometimes you could catch me doing something weird like I imagine I’m a batman and I’ll go outside in the dark streets and just walk around at night and there would be someone who needs my help randomly. It happened to me a few times.  I just was at the right place at the right time to help somebody like an older person falling. Minor little things where I was just there at the right time to help them.

Samir Husni: Were you fascinated with the black cat back home in Latvia?

Viktorija Pashuta: Oh yeah.  I’m a hardcore fan of the cat woman so I believe being behind the scenes and being that savior for those who cannot speak for themselves and elevate people. I would love to do more charity work. I would love to help more people.  I’ve been trying to find something meaningful that connect with me, especially in the long term. I want to work more with kids and do more of the educational talks where I can inspire young people to find their passions.  I was really grateful having really great mentors in my life and I want to pass it on and give back and be that mentor for someone else down the line.

Samir Husni: My typical final question is what keeps Viktorija up at night these days?

Viktorija Pashuta: What keeps me up at night usually some obsessive idea that I will never do. I had so many obsessive ideas that I see them so vividly but they never come to life. I roll them over back and forth in my head and I’m just thinking yes that’s exactly what I’m going to do but at the end of the day never do them, so that keeps me up at night.

Some kind of concepts,visions, and dreams that I feel stuck in my brain but would never materialize and that really drives me crazy I want this magic one where, well,  maybe like a utopia thing where one day I would be like saying Viktorija, you have all the wealth in the world now, you can do anything you want. I actually had a little notebook that I’ve been writing since age 11. It contains all of the amazing cool concepts and ideas I want to do one day. Right now, that little book is full with ideas from books, shows, and restaurants.

I mean anything in the world that I could have created in that little book. So one day maybe if I have so much free time and unlimited wealth probably will bringing my crazy ideas to life.

Samir Husni: May all your wishes come true and thank you.