To begin to understand how to make a successful magazine we first need to understand what a magazine actually is. Commonly magazines are accepted as a commercial product, however this does not cover all types of magazines. They can come in different formats for example, traditional glossy periodicals, one off event magazines, digital resources, PDF copies or independently created magazines. They could be in print, web, digital, but whatever the format they are becoming more of a niche product because of the vast wealth of information at our fingertips everyday, but they continue to hold on because the off something more. People read magazines for work, hobbies and pleasure, the use them to follow obsessions or to practise their craft. They are a snapshot of time of when the were produced, in that moment they allure, but they have a shelf life and so soon become outdated.
Magazines and independent publishing are having a “moment", it's a movement that is continually gaining momentum, designers, photographers, writers and eccentrics are pursuing their own publishing start up ventures. Maybe it's due to a decline of large scale commercial printing and publishing, and a constant lack of quality from more mainstream titles. Independent magazines may not be able to compete on scale but the capitalise the market in other ways, by serving up a far superior product, a finer quality print, precisely designed layouts and more honest writing style. Independent magazines embody a freedom to be able to make what you want to and not be tied down with the restrictions that go hand in hand with mainstream publishing, but instead its your own business, and you can create whatever your vision and budget wants to. Whatever the reason for this resurgence, people seek magazines that are made by passionate people, that craft them with integrity and the same desire to create a quality product as if they were the consumer.
The indie magazine culture could be seen as a parallel to the independent film movement around 1968/1969. Following the widespread popularity of television around this time and the “paramount case”, major Hollywood studios where running out of money and rather than investing in film the put their money into the spectacle: Widescreen, 3D and surround sound. This time period became known as new Hollywood, where now household names found fame. Dennis Hopper became one of the fist to create a film inside new Hollywood, Easy Riders. Independent films became the big thing in
Hollywood earning numerous Oscar nominations and creating people like
Francis Ford-Coppola and George Lucas. However like everything the bible soon burst and by the end of the decade the major studios brought up the independent film movement and saved themselves from the brink of oblivion.
To begin with we should talk about money, one of the major troubles with making an independent magazine is the financial side to it. It is probably the most neglected stage in the process, but financial planning is key to your success. This should be immediately figured out straight after you have devised your publishing model. A magazines main financial outlay will be your printing costs, maintaining a good working relationship with your printer will definitely help especially in future issues.
The second big stage to work on is the content of your magazine, your editorial budget will be affected by what type of magazine will be, and whether you are a one man team or are externally hiring writers, photographers, designers illustrators. Or will you calling in favours from friends and do most of the work yourself, which could be a helpful option at the begging stage to help with budgets and to keep down cost until you get off the ground. Nobody goes into publishing to make money, independently published magazines are notoriously difficult to continue and make money. Publishers often struggle to get their magazines launched because the go in to the business with the wrong strategy and publishing model, and more so for the wrong reasons. If your magazine can make you profit every issue you’re onto a winner, most of indie publishers will often create their magazines alongside paid employment, this is a great way of funding a magazine and will give you a fall back. However some manage to turn indie publishing into full time work, when you make it to this level you have made it.
Indie publishing is financially a dangerous business, expect to be in the red for a while, but if you keep plugging away it will turn around, at this stage to take it to the next level you need more funding, this is the point at which you stick or go mainstream. Going mainstream is not necessarily a bad thing, there are plenty of indie mainstream magazine for example Little White Lies. Being part of TCO Publishing, London, opens them up to more funding, which in turn helps them to pay staff to be in full time employment there. One way that they get to this financial injection is advertising. To most it would be a no go letting arguably one of the most evil business strategy that the greedy mass market world has, into your magazine. This is because indie publishers try to set themselves apart from the traditional publishing model, and can be seen as a way for large scale corporate takeovers. Indie publishers value their pages more and want them filled with content. Some people will disregard advertising completely and solely rely on sales revenue alone. But some people see advertising as a necessary evil to provide lucrative cash for their future plans. Getting advertisers into your magazine is easier said than done though.
Firstly advertising will get you nowhere if you choose the wrong business, they need to be palatable to you and your readership, and most importunely not clash with your magazines philosophy and core beliefs. Quality advertising is always better than quantity of advertising, Choose brands that work well with your content because readers don’t want to be bombarded with adverts the conflict against your editorial content. In many cases advertising will be managed by a media corporation such as Mediacom, Vizeum or Mindshare, so it isn’t a case of having a relevant contact at a Company that you would like to advertise in your magazine. Going through an agency like ALF, which is a directory that lists agencies and their brands they represent and can also provide contacts at brands directly these often cost around £2,500 but can be a worthwhile package. Once you have decided on who you want to advertise in your magazine where are you going to start?
A media pack is probably the most straight foreword way off bringing advertisers onboard, this could take the form of a printed document, PDF or as a website. This is a fast way of helping to sell your magazine as something that people want to advertise in, by showing them mock ups of spreads, and where they fit into it. It should include an introduction to what you magazine is all about, present your readership to them, explain the potential that they have by advertising in your magazine and include you publishing model and schedule. The media pack should be the pinnacle of your design, your unique selling point and most importantly the thing that sell your business.
To be more unique with you advertising you could find alternative ways to generate funding from your advertisers and ways into finding more readers. The Gentlewoman works with businesses for example to host a readers club, where they have events like ghost walks and fitness classes, or Disegno, who hold bespoke events with brands to generate interest in themselves.
In the previous chapter I discussed making money but to be able to make money from your magazine you first need to understand publishing models. Unlike mainstream magazines, independent ones are generally not published under a large umbrella publishing house like you would find with glossy magazines like Vogue or GQ. To start out in this business you need to craft a publishi
ng model. This will help at every stage in the life of your magazine. It sets out the purpose of you idea, the content, the people that will supply that content, how you're going to go to print, your distribution and subscription model and your roadmap for the financial side of your business.
Distribution is one of the most important stages in the process of independent magazines, finding a place to sell your product can be hard, some exclusively sell online, but to get your product out into the world it has to be seen first. Marc Robbemond is the owner of a legendary magazine store Atheneum Nieuwscentrum in Amsterdam, “At the moment 40 per cent of the collection is independent” he says “The number of indie titles is going up, in terms of sales the independent magazines are doing well”
He goes on to say “A strong identity is very important” this shows that in order for indie magazines to sell well the need to be a far superior product to the classic glossy magazines. Lewis Angharad “So you want publish a magazine?”, (2016) Laurence King Publishing. In the UK the easiest way to distribute your magazine would either be online or by selling in local stores, like coffee houses or craft stores, or whatever fits your magazines demographic. However the biggest retailer for magazines is WH Smiths, the by far have the largest collection of magazines in the country, however the majority of there stock is the typical mass produced glossy magazines, but they do hold a vast selection of more independent titles like Apartamento, Huck, Little White Lies and Pigeons and Peacocks.
In this chapter I will define what success is, sounds simple, but there are numerous ways to be successful, it could be through finance, readership or making a difference. Even if you do create a very strong magazine it docent necessarily relate to success, this was the case with The Face magazine, a British music, fashion and culture monthly the was created in 1980 by Nick Logan. It got off to a strong start, being influential in showcasing the fashion and youth culture of the time period. It gain huge popularity under design leadership from Neville Brody during the 1980’s where he was graphic designer, typographer and art director.
However Going into the 90’s brought trouble for The Face, though sales remained
strong they faced numerous legal issues and in 1999 the magazine was sold to
publishers’ EMAP. Around this same period numerous staff left the magazine; Neville Brody, Lee Swillingham and James Truman, who went on to be editor of details magazine in America. Ultimately as of 2004 The Face folded, sales had declined since its sale, they had lost all of their advertisers, so publishers EMAP closed the magazine to focus on other projects. However this wasn’t the end of The Face, in 2011 it was added to a permanent collection at the Design Museum in London. Success can be great for business, but it can disappear very quickly, though the created a beloved title that had a strong readership, it wasn’t enough in the end, so what do you need to make a successful magazine?
To answer this you need to decide why you are doing this, is it a passion or a hobby that you wan to share with others, is it about telling stories or is it purely for financial reasons. The key to any of them however is to be distinctive about what you product is, it has to be topic with longevity, not flash in the pan stuff. Only these magazines will survive, Delayed Gratification is a good example of this, having a strong concept has given then a clear framework for a basis for every issue, they never have to worry about what the content for there next issue will be because its basically going to be written for them because the news will never stop and will remain interesting in the future. Having a strong concept will helpfully get you through the first few years, before thinking about shaking up what you have built. Ultimately longevity is the key to success with it brings and audience and financial stability. One magazine that has done this almost without fault for a long period of time is Huck.
Launching in 2006 as a bi-monthly magazine it has a massively strong concept that
explores sub cultures around the world as a basis for looking at society, politics and music, and initially inspired by the rebellious nature of these people. Since their maiden issue in 2006 this theme has diversified over the years to continually grow their readership and to expand their market, and is now available in over 20 markets around the world. Editor Andrea Kurland defined Huck as an "punk, skateboarding, surfing, activism, hip-hop, outsider art and indie publishing” title. It is published by TCO London who provide funding for the magazine split with their sister magazine Little White Lies, However they continue to has a strong advertising presence in their magazine but it is ethical advertising. Companies that wont alienate the Huck audience are present within the magazine, such as The North Face, Nixon watches and Vans, who earlier this year began partnering with Huck in exploring creative expression and sharing them with their audiences.
Of course a good concept is nothing without a good product to back it up, and Huck knows this, they found their style from the beginning, and it has hardly changed in the past twelve years. Primarily because it is an award winning design, winning the Society of Publication Designers award in 2014 for editorial design in 2010 they were also nominated for a D&AD
Yellow Pencil nomination for Illustration/Magazine & Newspaper design and many others.
Theres a playfulness about Huck’s design, layouts are designed to follow their content of the article, all-though the subtly do this it can for some dramatic designs.
In issue 65, for example, The coming of age issue, an article is presented about Finnish drifters, simple typography choices are made into beautifully representative images by taking a standard san serif font and blowing out the edges of the letters with noice creates the illusion of snow, and stretching out O’s in words makes the read immediately think of drinking and doing donuts in the snow. Matching these little quirks with a minimal pallet for each article, often just one colour that links the images together helps brings an element way to like pages of an article together.
To juxtapose other more serious articles in the magazine this article inject an element of fun, with the introductory paragraphs in the article, drop caps, rules and text boxes are played with angle and direction, which to begin with may look odd, but as you are reading the article and turning the magazine around to read the paragraphs, you realise that the magazine is subconsciously making you drift like your turn the car’s wheel. Adding little bits of fun can help people feel part of it and to have that experience. Which I think is true of what Huck is, its giving people an insight into a culture or place they they probably have never seen or experienced before, giving them a more immersive experience.
Playing with typography over recent years has become something that Huck does with most of its feature articles, whether its playing with scale and creating a strong hierarchy with there body copy and page articles like pull quotes, or they might play with more illustrative typography that is used as a launchpad into the theme of the article, like using a hand written marker style font for an article about teenage punk angst and there rebellion, just makes the article feel right, rather than using a standard font from a computer, ultimately it gives it a human touch, bringing it back ful
l circle to there concept of subcultures, human nature and rebellious attitudes towards authority.
One of the most important parts of Huck is there fantastic documentary photography. Every issues biggest feature is there photography, the have a couple of full time photographers on staff that photograph interviews and smaller features and then they have a roll call of amazing photographers that guest in each magazine there are around thirty in each issue, each having there own speciality and style. They range from people like Ed Templeton and Max Pinckers that create iconic and beautiful documentary photography to Theo McInnes who mostly explores documentary portrait photography. With out their fantastic range and quality of photography I could be argued that Huck wouldn’t be around, because it is so integral in the way that the designers Oliver Stafford, Simon Hayes and illustrator Sophie Mo way hand in hand with the photographers and the writers to pool together there ideas for an articles and bring it to life. There working practice ties them all together back to there concept of exploring creativity and learning about others, working closely with Little White Lies too to bring in other talent like Sophie Mo who illustrates articles for them and bring her experience to Huck to work on illustrative typography.
Born out of this in recent years Huck has spread its wing and become an online video platform, particularly with their partnership with Vans the bring there countercultural attitude to an even larger audiences. They also upload online articles to their website daily to make them a digital first publication, which if independent magazines are having a moment, is a good thing because the already have an extraordinary large fanbase across the world and increasing that via alternate platforms can only be a good thing for them.