The shortlist is out, and CMYK Design is nominated in five categories of the PPA Scotland Awards to be announced on 26 November at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.
FYi is up for best magazine design in the business & professional category
Scotland Outdoors is a contender for best magazine design in the consumer area
Our work on Scotland in Trust magazine is being recognised in the Best small publisher category and also as best membership magazine
Jostling for best customer magazine is our wee baby aurora – launched in the teeth of the recession, but still bringing in the advertising, and looking fab. But we would say that wouldn’t we.
Obviously, chuffed to bits to be recognised for all our efforts over the past year.
Artwork for the Obstinate Donkey circa 1940
Plaque at the Courier Building in Dundee
As members of PPA Scotland we have occasional meetings where we discuss the future of publishing in Scotland and all that. Yesterday’s meeting had an extra gloss however, as the venue was the hallowed DC Thomson offices in Dundee. The building itself reminded me of the Scotsman offices in North Bridge, Edinburgh – lots of floors, tiny offices, wood panelling, labyrinth-like corridors and even little fireplaces in some rooms!
Continue reading ‘PPA Scotland visit to DC Thomson in Dundee’
Kids mag Anorak is inviting student submissions for the cover of a special edition of their magazine.
For more details visit the Anorak website
When we get busy, wemakemags gets quiet I’m afraid. Happily that means we’re up to our eyes in new work.
Things that have been keeping us busy have included getting aurora magazine to issue two and tending to the needs of our first public sector client, the Scottish Prison Service. The SPS’s decision to work with CMYK Design is a fantastic vote of confidence both in the quality of our work and in our ability to deliver it. It’s also a major success for us as a small company. Anyone who has been involved in the tendering process for public bodies will attest it can be some of the hardest-won work there is.
Forgive us, then for blowing our own trumpet!
With what must surely be painstaking effort, Peter Funch pieces together themed sets of photographs to create street scenes that oscilate from the comedic to the downright creepy!
Check out Peter’s handywork here
With all this talk of magazines closing, it’s about time we told you about our new (glossy) project, which launches today. Aurora – the inflight magazine for Highland Airways – is now officially out and available on scheduled and charter flights from the company.
CMYK Design create editorial content, commission photography and illustrations, sell advertising space in the title and handle print and distribution. It’s fantastic to be involved in a magazine like this – and we expect the magazine to go from strength to strength.
So another men’s magazine closes. Maxim, which, to be honest, I won’t miss much – has closed in the UK. However, it still continues to sell 2.5m copies in the US, and has franchises in other countries such as China, India and France. I found only one copy in my archives – it dates from 2000 – around the height of the lads’ mag boom, but it is pretty dire, and I am surprised it held on for so long. I can’t even bring myself to put the cover up here. The image above is the launch issue from 1995 – edited by Gill Hudson – now editor of Radio Times
The digital version of the magazine will continue we are told – and I guess that is the way things are going anyhow. In this YouTube culture, you can access pretty much anything you want immediately, so waiting a month for a printed magazine to hit the shelves seems pretty redundant.
I’m a bit late with this post about Arena magazine, which sadly closed the doors in March.
Just thought I’d tell you about the time when I worked at (previous publishers of Arena) Wagadon on an issue of The Face. That’s another story, but while I was there I was chatting to then editor, Dylan Jones, about the Greta Scacchi cover they ran in summer 1991. It was the first time they had ever put a woman on the front cover, and the issue sold out completely. This made him realise – a men’s magazine doesn’t have to have images of men on the front cover (as every issue had done before). Well, you just need to look at any men’s magazine today – to see that Arena started the revolution – for better or for worse. Continue reading ‘Arena – gone but not forgotten’
Our new inflight magazine, aurora, for Highland Airways, went to press on Friday. Of course I couldn’t miss a trip to our printers, Scotprint, who are based in Haddington.
All went really well, with 16 to view printed both sides – so 32 pages passed in one fell swoop! I remember the days when I used to pass every section of Caledonia magazine, but it was only 8 pages to view, single sided. You can imagine how long that took.
Anyway, we are due to get early copies on Wednesday, so will update this post then.
PPA Scotland had a meeting on Thursday 26 March at the Scottish Parliament with a number of MSPs present. The object was to lobby MSPs and make them aware of the problems we small publishers face. I spoke about the complicated procedures inherent in tendering for the public sector, Paul Begley from 55 North talked about the red tape that small businesses have to put up with, and Tom Lovering from PSP Publishing told MSPs about the difficulties we face when trying to get magazines onto the shelves in stores like WH Smith.
Continue reading ‘PPA Scotland at the Parliament’
