The notebook of the New Product Development team at IPC Media. What we’re thinking, what we’re looking at, who we’re talking to…
This years Design conference brought together the many designers of IPC, for a day of presentations and workshops. Carla Franks was the guest speaker , and she gave us a presentation on ‘Inspiration’. Carla was able to talk us through her work on Oprah magazine, providing the IPC designers with an insight into the highs and lows of its launch. (more…)
Loaded bagged IPC’s December Cover of the Month, and immediately ran into the usual run of complaints, culminating in the decision not to put the cover on display in the Blue Sky Cafe, as it was recognised that this sort of material still genuinely offends many people. Which in this day and age, I am absolutely delighted by, as the ability of magazines to enrage and infuriate was the reason why I got into this line of work in the first place. Thank god they still work!
Commenting on ‘men’s’ magazines has tripped up smarter people than me, but in its market, this cover is good work, so it’s right that I make the attempt.
I’ve been checking out image-based aggregation websites - http://tastespotting.com/ (recommended by one of my lovely research participants – thank you)
And http://streetstyl.es/ -
I love the concept of both sites – simple propositions (recipes and street fashion respectively) simply laid out in a highly visual style.
Looking at these sites I thought it’d be a great format for saving images from the web for a kind of image bookmarking tool. Ever lost track of great images you found online? In 2 seconds of Googling and I found 2 services to let you bookmark & tag images, as well as browse your saved images as thumbnails - http://weheartit.com and http://vi.sualize.us
TV & Satellite week demolished The Field in October’s IPC Cover of The Month competition. As this is the second time the title has won in the last three months, it suggests they must be doing something right! Keep reading to find out exactly what makes the cover so good, together with some exclusive comment from the editor.
I imagine that most of us, even if we don’t actually use it day-to-day as much as we should, are at least familiar with Hitwise and the services it provides for competitive websites.
Still, yesterday’s MAP gathering provided an ample refresher in the shape of Robin Goad, the Director Of Research for Hitwise UK who entertained us for an hour in the lecture theatre with a catch-up of all the stuff Hitwise has to offer. (more…)
Voted as such by the mysterious IPC Editors’ Group, Cover Of The Month is no more or less accurate than any other judging process. But the winner is always good, as demonstrated by this outstanding Living etc cover. Here are 7 reasons why it’s so smart:
Inadvisable as it may seem in these tough trading times to heed ancient wisdoms unchallenged, there’s at least one hand-me-down that still appears to be worth the metaphorical tablets of stone it was chiselled on.
I’m thinking of the three golden rules of cover image as practised to the letter by Ignite and, for all I know, several other editorial departments.
Simply, this dictum states that, in order for a front cover to work most effectively, the cover image must be of:
1. The right subject
2. The right image of said subject
3. And that the right image of the right subject should be published at the right time.
The saying goes that three out of three – right subject, right pic, right time - you’re on a winner; two out of three, you’re on reasonably safe ground, one out of three you’re barking up the wrong tree and zero out of three, you should probably be sacked. (more…)
It’s a dangerous job, working in NPD.
You’re always on your guard against the temptation to take what you’ve learned from researching one brand and bring it to bear upon another. You don’t want to discover that the Womans’ Weekly reader is drawn, trancelike, to all things pink only to find yourself trying to import it into the colour palette of Golf Monthly. That way disaster will surely lie.
On the other hand, the privilege of working across so many brands in so many areas can lead to unearthing an emerging trend in reader/user habits or preferences which working on solely one brand might not reveal.
Recently one such trend to surface alongside the crucial need to give VFM (value for money) in our competitive markets is the issue of believability. (more…)
Dan Lyons came to the Editors’ Conference and gave a wonderful, witty presentation. We were unable to record it, but here’s one he did earlier.
Earlier today we interviewed a few of the great and the good, and heres what they had to say…
