Highland Airways has asked CMYK Design to publish a new quarterly inflight magazine for their passenger routes, starting in spring 2009. CMYK will create all editorial content and also sell advertising space for the magazine which will go under the name aurora. At 52 pages, the magazine will cover lifestyle, city focus features, wealth management, sport and health matters, along with profiles and Highland Airways news content.

Highland Airways carried 28,000 passengers last year over a variety of scheduled routes, including Stornoway to Inverness, Anglesey to Cardiff and Tiree to Oban. In addition, the company run frequent business-related charter flights from Edinburgh and Glasgow to destinations in the south and north of England. Projected passenger numbers for 2009 are approximately 56,000. With the unique positioning of the magazine in aircraft seat backs, aurora magazine has a potential readership of 200,000, making it not only an exciting commercial opportunity, but also a valuable marketing device.

Edinburgh-based CMYK Design helped launch Caledonia magazine in 1999, and currently publish the award-winning membership magazine Scotland in Trust on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland. They are shortlisted for Best Small Publisher at the PPA Scotland Awards later this month.

Highland Airways Commercial Manager Colin Munro said: “We chose CMYK Design due to their vast experience of the magazine industry and we are very excited by this new launch. Hopefully this will grow in to a profitable and long-term arrangement for both companies.”

Neil Braidwood, Creative Director at CMYK Design said “we are delighted to be working with Highland Airways on this new development, and look forward to building a strong working partnership.”

More details:

Highland Airways, 01667 462 664. www.highlandairways.co.uk

CMYK Design, 0131 556 2220. www.cmyk-design.co.uk

aurora in flight magazine

The magazine is aimed at young doctors in their Foundation Years – a 2 year period of placement which all doctors are obliged to do post university – and was intended as a publicity tool to help with uptake of MDDUS membership.

Looking at some of the literature that is targeted at this group, it seemed as though there was a wide gap between dry and dusty yawn-inducing material and publications which had taken the ‘young audience’ part to heart and strayed into blue peter territory!

In creating the new mag, we wanted to give it an up to the minute look which avoided ‘grungey’ stylings in favour of a more sophisticated, elegant approach. With this in mind, we opted for the rather lovely new Soho Gothic face throughout. We loved the opportunities presented by the wide variations in weight from ultra heavy to super skinny thin.

In keeping with these choices, we avoided a riot of colour, instead going for a pantone orange throughout which would be used rather like a signature colour. In the final print, this has come out satisfyingly vibrant and should clearly set the title apart from it’s rivals (with thanks to the chaps at Woods for doing their usual bang-up job!).

To make the title a little different, we also made a real feature of the folios integrating them into the design and giving them prominence on the page, rather than sneaking them in at the bottom of the page as an afterthought.

It’s a dinky little title at just 16 A4 pages, saddle stitched, but we’re very pleased with it’s overall look and think it fits the bill perfectly.

Our clients at the MDDUS, I’m pleased to report, share our enthusiasm and we’re both looking forward to getting some feedback once the copies start hitting the doormats.

“It looks excellent! I think you’ve done a fantastic job with the spec — the distinctive branding and design approach throughout with the orange and the use of white space. Thanks again for putting so much careful time and thought into this!” – Jim Killgore, MDDUS