making a mag

Yesterday afternoon, I received a brief from another client who wants my company to develop a set of publications, including a quarterly magazine. Content development is one of the things I enjoy doing most, work-wise.

In this case, the brief was equivalent to "We want a magazine. Give us one." So my crew and I are doing everything - from conceptualizing what the mag is, what to name it, how many pages it will be, what paper will be used, what will it contain, who will write the articles, who will take the photos, who will advertise, what print supplier to use, layout, art direction, everything. Including how to make it pay for itself. I'm delighted because this exercise requires me to wear my multiple hats again and work out an integrated approach to things, which is precisely what my company is geared towards doing. Developing a mag from end-to-end is not that easy but neither it is impossible. The key is understanding, prioritizing, developing and implementing the tasks that need to be done, with an unflinching eye towards maintaining a high quality level.

One of things I need to do is to immerse myself in the subject matter that the target audience of the mag-to-be. In this case, I will need to spend a lot of time playing games. Which I take with a smile, because it harkens back to the days when I was the Brand Leader for Magic: The Gathering and other Wizards of the Coasts products. The only difference is that all of the gaming I need to do is online - MMORPG (I will steal my friend Joey Alarilla's brain to get me going).

I love fantasy, I love gaming, I love fantasy games, so I don't think I'll much of an issue getting immersed - and it's work (haha). It's like the time I got to do comic books for Levis.

I love my job.