Month / July 2014

by Magdiaries

Still the best of jobs

I started with cow gum, scalpel and passing off stone. Now the keyboard is king with DTP and social media. The constant is arranging words and images to engage and entertain.

It is still a great job to do – creative, collaborative, constantly challenging. Distribution is key – it always has been. Seeing technology merely as a cost-cutter is the greatest danger we face. Magpie journalism and me-too projects the biggest bugbear.

We must be more confident in our abilities, in arguing the case for creativity, originality, independence. None of that cuts across commercial reality.

Writing is still the best of jobs.

Martin Cloake | Chief sub, Progressive Customer Publishing



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Rising from the ashes of print

Working for Dennis Media Factory, developing magazine apps for various platforms, makes me feel excited about magazine publishing today.

We’re in a digital revolution that is bringing a new ‘eco-system’ of virtual environments on multiple devices. It’s not just a challenge to traditional print magazines, it’s a whole new perspective: the next magazine will be a real digital product.

We’re reinventing the definition of magazines and the reading experience. I think EVO is a good example: content has been rethought and rearranged, and it is perfectly proportioned on different devices.

Like a phoenix, magazines are experiencing a fiery digital rebirth.

Stella Dou | Digital product designer, DMF, Dennis Publishing



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Our own magazine

For decades we designed and produced magazines for other people, but last year, we had the chance to buy a publication from a long-standing client – Scotland Outdoors.

We took on an established quality printed publication, and now we are coaxing it into the digital age, learning new skills along the way.

Now, instead of delivering a product to our clients, we are responsible for nurturing this magazine, encouraging people to subscribe, connecting with a community through channels we never imagined possible.

It is exhilarating. It is scary, and it is fun. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Neil Braidwood | Publisher, Scotland Outdoors

 

 

 



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Manufacturers of content

Each time we get a new member of staff I try and make sure they get to spend the day at our printers watching our magazines be created from giant loo rolls of paper into gorgeous, physical products.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking what we do essentially stops at desktop publishing. Our content is the product we design, manufacture and sell every bit as much as a car’s the product designed, manufactured and sold by Audi.

We are manufacturers of content and if we lose that connection to the end product we miss the whole point.

Mark Alker | Publisher, Singletrack Magazine

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Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Outside in

Since the first ever edition in the 18th century, a magazine has been a container and a commercial proposition.

Magazine editors thought only about what they poured into that container. Lecturers teach students how to create content to fill the container. We never questioned that container.

Now there are many questions. Does a magazine need a cover? Can a magazine be just one story? What if you can make a magazine by curating content from your social networks?

We need to teach students to consider magazines from the outside in, not the inside out.

They will be the magazine saviours.

Beth Brewster | Head of Journalism & Publishing, Kingston University London



Grub Street Journal