Intern Magazine Brief

Before the brief, Alec gave a talk about how he had got to where he was today in his career.








Boat: Travel magazine
         Had Purpose of been a part of & was passionate about.
         Each issue goes to a different city.
         September 2012 (Athens) Political interest at the time.


After 9 months of interships she decided to set up his own magazine. No other magazine.
Dual Purpose to get the brand our there & lead form kickstarter campaign.


Having an issue zero - allowed other press to see work.


Distributed first issue self-time consuming ideas of which other publications would sit next to best where it would sell well.


Sponsorships - adverts, but designed in house. Tricks & Tips to build in.

Intern - is a magazine about unpaid internships.

images are crisp & typography pulls it together.



Group Brief:
It was then our turn to have a go at coming up with a concept for an independent magazine and develop a front cover, mast head and ideas for a kickstarter campaign.
We were told to get into groups of 5 or 6, I was in a group with the following people. Sam Walker Caitlin Walsh Mel Hardcastle Daisy Conway Amy Hill
I was unsure at first about working with my close friends within the course but it turned out that it had to be as tables just grouped up straight away so therefore, although I think we would have to disagree probably on decisions we can speak openly as we all have a close bond. So we can all say how we feel.

Everytime we came up with a concept at first we always looked for the downfalls within the concept. Although Alec came round and said you need to stop that because there is going to be bad things about everything you make!

This is the mind map we produced with all our initial ideas. This included a magazine about alcohol and it would feature a different spirit each week and talk about drinks you could make with this, recipes to involve the spirit and bars that specialised in it, but we disregarded it as we felt it didn't have longevity due to their only being so many spirits out there and we were unsure who the target market would be for this.

We also thought about a dinner party magazine which could include recipes, drinks, design based inspiration such as table settings, themes for dinner parties, etc. But again we talked ourselves away from this idea for many reasons and again one of these was being unsure of the audience of the magazine and if this audience would want to read about dinner parties.

From this we all settled on one of our original ideas which was to produce a travel based independent magazine but focussing on travelling within the UK. We thought of a name really quickly as we wanted to play on the 'stay cation' idea so we all agreed Stay would be a good name as it was simple, easy to remember, had potential to look striking on a cover and simply conveyed the idea about staying in the UK. 

We developed this idea quite quickly as we were all really interested in the idea. We worked through some of the points on the sheet we had been given out including concept, audience, aesthetic, etc. 

We had decided that the magazine would come out 4 times a year and so we played on this to turn it into more of concept and thought about basing each issue on the season that it came out, as this would allow us to feature all four seasons of the year. Each issue would include the best places to go during the season including events at the time and things to do and see during the time of year through the year. 

In terms of audience we thought the magazine would be best suited to young professionals who had busy lifestyles and so didn't have the time to jet off abroad for two weeks at a time, but did have time for weekend breaks within the UK. With this audience the sophisticated aesthetic we had been discussing would also be appropriate.

This lead us to our tagline of:

 'stay near, travel more'

Which clearly sums up the concept of the magazine. 

We started to talk in more detail about the aesthetic of the magazine and we agreed that we should put pictures up that people wouldn't think would be in England. As we are trying to aim to people that tend to want to go on holiday to beautiful places but believe these beautiful places can only be found abroad!

Then thought of placing the images as a full bleed with the solo title in the middle not taking anything away from the image.

She found the photograph above and we were all really shocked to find out that this was in Cornwall, so we felt it would be appropriate to use. 

We searched for photographs that would really stand out among other magazines and looked as opposite to the stereotypical British picture as possible. 

Here are some other front covers that we could potentially use for the different seasons. 

As we had finalised the aesthetic for the magazine we moved on to thinking about the Kickstarter campaign. Myself, Mel G and Mel H took charge of this and looked at some campaigns we felt were effective. 

We discussed a few ideas and agreed that it needed to feature us in some of the places that would feature in the magazine and initially not tell the audience that the places were in England. When we explained this to the group Caitlin had the idea of holding up an issue of the magazine that had a photograph of the place we were in on the cover and then we would slowly pull the magazine issue away from the camera to reveal that we were actually in that place. We all really liked this idea for the video so Caitlin mocked up a quick visual representation of this to assist our presentation later. 

Both Mels and I then started to think about what incentives we could give to people if they donated to our Kickstarter. We wanted these to be relevant to the concept of the magazine as the people that would invest would be the people that had an interest in what the magazine was about. 

We thought about the different levels of gifts as well as we needed cheaper, more mass produced gifts in addition to larger more substantial incentives. But all levels needed to bare relevance to the magazine. 

We settled on postcards as the smaller gifts as the idea was that the investors could send these out when they visited the places featured, as of course they would feature places that we would feature in our magazine. 

For the medium level incentives we thought about train tickets as this would assist the audiences travel to some of the places within the UK. And we also thought about free issues of the magazine as this is something a lot of others had done on Kickstarter and it seems very appropriate to give people that are interested in and invested the magazine so many copies. 

In terms of larger incentives this is when we got chance to dig a bit deeper so after discussing with Alec we thought about some of the iconic visitors attractions in the UK that many people would want to go to, as we could offer free tickets to these places. Alec really liked this idea as he explained that these are the types of places that would love to be featured in a magazine like ours as it gives them great exposure. 

So we came up with an attraction for England - Tea Factory Tour , Ireland - Guiness Tour, Scotland - Scotch Whiskey Tasting Experience and Wales - Cheese Factory.

We researched and found that all these places did exist before we selected them!

We also decided that we could feature a thank you page and include the names of the people that donated significant sums, as most people would like to have their name in a printed publication.  

Presentation

For the presentation we simply put the front covers on the projector and talked through our concept and kickstarted idea. Although we had a little problem with the viewing of the front covers I do believe that we pulled it off. Everyone had a little input so therefore it wasn't left to one person.

The feedback was very good and people said that they could see this magazine working in the real world. In terms of our cover the feedback was that the photographs were great and would definitely appeal as they did not like your typical UK getaway, although they thought that it looked a little high-end and therefore wouldn't appeal to the audience proposed.

People also commented saying that we could add info such as what to do when it is raining! This was really good feedback and would definately benefit us if we decided to take this brief further.



Evaluation
 
I am pleased overall with the outcome. I do believe that a group of 6 with the amount of work that was given left the work spread out thinly and therefore I didn't feel like I did a lot of work although I do feel that this had to be the case so that people wasn't hold each others hand while designing the front cover...