Category: Magazine Blog

Final Day This is the last day of work on this module, plenty of sub-editing, re-sub-editing to ensure that everyone's work is perfect to a tee and ready to go to print; this also included a redesign and development of the cover so that it was in its final stage and that everyone was happy with it going into the final stage of production.  Final Branding Decisions:  As a result of earlier decisions about the style of the magazine, there it has always been the intention that the final magazine product would be minimalist in terms of cover design and throughout.  At the beginning of the day it was decided that we would try and develop the cover as there was some disagreement with the logo and the general consensus that it could look more professional without this and that some of the presentation could be adjusted further as well. As a result of this the cover evolved over the day, each...

Magazine Indesign document: This week also included the bringing together of some of the articles that were nearing completion into one document. It became clear by the end of the day that it may create more problems than this solves, as having one main document means that next week, everyone will have to do their editing one at a time. This will be time-consuming, even more so as the fonts are only accessible through one person's login details.  Creating my contribution to the magazine up to this point had been difficult because, while my feature has been complete for the past few weeks, I have struggled to be able to get a hold of the images that I need for my piece. The weekend before this session I was able to get these images which (seen in Fig.1), while this will not be the final iteration of my article it is a starting point for my design which has evolved over the last...

Work completion and prep for final magazine stages:  For my design which has evolved constantly over the module, I opted to make use of 6 out of the 8 available pages. This is because, while my feature is certainly a people based article and images help to illustrate this in most cases, this is also a piece about people who vulnerable and how feeding people in need is one of many ways to avoid excessive edible food waste. So, slightly fewer pages mean that I can make use of 3 or 4 well-selected images that I feel will best accompany my feature.  In my design as it stands, there are currently Unsplash images standing in for my own photography as I have not yet been able to get out take them, but I should be able to get this done before next week (*see below*). After looking at other magazines in the newsroom for inspiration, I have instead used the placement of quotes...

Feature feedback:  At the point that this was marked, I had only just transcribed my second and third interviews (which had been conducted nearly two weeks previously) and so the article was about 250 words short. This was because of poor time management on my part, but the feedback Robyn gave me was still very positive, and give me clear areas to work on.  Adjustments: In the feedback Robyn said that she liked the article sections, especially the idea of "York's forgotten orchards", and so I decided to split my feature distinctly into these areas. By this, I mean that I made the decision to place each of the article subsections on to different pages within my design.  Some of my phraseology was nonsensical and did need reworking something that I made sure to sort during the session before I began adding the final elements. On top of this, the title was too wordy and need some adjustment, I decided on: Fighting the good fight. There...

Lecture Content  During this lecture, we mostly looked at the skills required to pitch a story to an editor well. We were shown various rates of pay for freelancing work across UK publications as well, which left us all with some sense of hope that getting paid at some point is a possibility. Following this, we looked at being able to properly sub-edit pieces of work. As this is something that we will all be required to do to make sure that the magazine looks good and has content that represents the University well. Design Element of the magazine Progression: Within the early part of the semester, it became clear that the general consensus was for a minimalist and professional look for the layout of the magazine was the most popular. The rules for this require there to be high quality and interesting images accompanied by white space and text.  For magazine design there are several "industry standards", for example, the main body of text will all...

Lecture Content  We had an update meeting on what the plan for The Yorkie magazine is and are now aware that the University will not be paying for everyone's work to be in the magazine, only the feature pieces with the best content and highest quality will be included. This will make planning more difficult because it means deciding at the last minute what will be included in the magazine unless there is another progression in this plan. However, this will ensure that the magazine has better content and ensure that people are motivated to do their best work.  Task Use a "£100 marketing budget" and look at how this could be used to increase readership of the Yorkie.  There are numerous possibilities to market The Yorkie with a budget such as this with digital media being so easily accessible. As well as this, with York being such a small city it would be far easier to hold events etc. that could garner plenty...

Week 5 During the Lecture we looked at different income models and what they achieve for a publication, for example:  display advertising  classified marketing native advertising/advertorial branded media  online programmatic ads external/affiliate links  subscriptions  memberships  events  merchandise/shops  Income models that could work for the Yorkie magazine: During the session, we went from looking at these models briefly to splitting into groups to concentrate on one specific type and provide a more detailed description and analysis of how this could work for The Yorkie. In my group, we looked at how effective Native Advertising can be.  Native Advertising is where content is paid for by a company, business or sponsor and is completed in the publications standard editorial style. It's effective because of this and organisations such as the Huff Post, BuzzFeed and the Guardian Lab teams make use of this technique. You get paid to create the content and as a result of this may be seen to be selling out, however,...

Session Work This was the first week without taught content to be considered, instead, the group began pitching story ideas for the upcoming magazine. For this, I pitched four story ideas:  A look at the open mic-night scene in York  Food wastage by companies in York and surrounding areas  Recycling statistics and how paper is recycled in Yorkshire A comparative of MP profiles against youth politicians in Yorkshire The rest of the day was then spent looking at how these stories could be followed up and developed, I looked into the lack of youth politicians in the Yorkshire area and could not find any particular reason for this. I also looked at the possibility of following up on the rest of the stories. This work required me to look into the history of youth voting in Yorkshire, at the time there was no youth representative listed for the York area, and showed me that if I were to follow up on it, the story...

Lecture Content During this session we began to look at the breakdown of what we would want in terms of readership for the Yorkie, this followed on from our task last week which was to take a look at what we would want as individuals creating this publication. We each presented these ideas at the beginning of the session, and then came together to discuss everyone's ideas and come up with a first draft of the sections that we would include:  Politics and Current Affairs   People  Fashion  Arts and Culture  Moving on from this we began to discuss what could be included in the aesthetic of the magazine. Overall, the general consensus was for a minimalist, colour muted and image-friendly publication. During this session we also selected the roles for the module, discussing through the roles' responsibilities which led to the completed lists which can be found below in the Appendix.  The Feature Writing Session focused on profile work and using information and...

Lecture Content For this, myself, Ethan and Elisha researched information about The Economist and presented this work to the rest of the group, through this we were able to look more closely at how magazines are considered successful. My role involved looking into this specifically as well as the type of content.  We then looked at the demographic breakdowns ("media packs") of other magazines and considered who the Yorkie would be aimed at. Thanks to the research I carried out for the previous weeks' work, I was aware of  the three ideals that Johnson and Prijatel consider in order to assess the success and failure of a publication: A highly focused editorial philosophy A clearly defined formula A thorough understanding of and connection with the audience (1999)  This was used to help with my presentation, but hopefully is also going to be of use going forward and looking at the Yorkie magazine itself. A magazine needs to be able to sell to...