And yet this report seems far from the whole story. With the Professional Publishers Association releasing a combined digital and print circulation chart for the first time this year, came strong evidence of continued consumer and trade interest in the magazine concept, with the printed product in many cases benefitting from renewed, digitally spurred engagement.
Clickable paper and interactive digital watermarking on printed mags certainly seem to be making a splash at present, and will perhaps drive further renewed engagement with print in the future. But according to trade, customer and consumer publishers alike, innovative designs, finishing and substrates, still hold real sway too...
Intent Media
The company Intent Media was established 15 years ago with just one title, computer games trade publication MCV. Today the company publishes 19 trade titles, including several other gaming magazines, music titles such as Music Week, audio titles, and leisure trade mags such as Bike Biz. Many of these titles are now also delivered digitally, and Intent has grown an events arm, hosting a range of conferences, expos and awards. Today, Intent has a turnover of £10.5m and employs 101 staff.
Print needs Intent Media prints in excess of 6m pages per month across all its titles. "Print is a huge part of our revenue so a lot of effort still goes into that. We’re putting more and more into digital and events so it is changing, there’s no doubt about it. But print is still very, very strong for us," says head of operations Stuart Moody.
In addition, the company prints A4 and A3 marketing and events collateral on four high-volume Ricoh and Konica Minolta machines at an in-house print facility. Wide-format banners and posters for events are outsourced.
The printers Intent Media has a roster of three printers it uses for magazine printing. Moody explains that dividing work between Pensord, Stephens & George and The Manson Group keeps things competitive. "We’ve always used at least two because it puts a bit of competitiveness in the system, that’s really the main reason for it," says Moody. "We review this every year just to be sure we’re still competitive in the marketplace, but we’re at the stage now where we don’t expect anyone to come up with a better service or better prices. Generally we expect to stay with the same printers and have done for a few years now."
Besides price, the other key area Intent’s printers must be hot on, is always letting the publisher know of new substrates and finishing techniques as they become available. "We get requests for all sorts of things from advertisers, but they ask you to come up with ideas on how to make it happen," reports Moody.
"We had a request for feathers to be stuck to the front of a cover, for a computer game advert – the artwork was a winged angel and they wanted real feathers on the wings," he says. "I found a website that could source 20,000 ostrich feathers for me; they would have been spot glued on. That project didn’t go through in the end, which was a shame, but it gives you an idea of the kind of requests we get, mostly from the computer games advertisers."
The more proactive Intent’s printers can be in this area the better. "On quite a few occasions they’ve found something new and they’ll let us know if they think it’s something our advertiser base would like. We often get samples through the door which is nice," says Moody.
The challenges Including special finishes in a magazine can, however, present turnaround challenges. "We get requests for everything from fragrances to varnishes and die-cutting, and obviously including those will condense the amount of time we have to produce the magazine. Generally, we try to take some time from our end and hope the printers will take some from their end, so we meet in the middle," says Moody.
All three of Intent’s printers are very helpful in being flexible where needed, he reports: "On the monthlies, especially when there are things like conferences really close to deadline day, we quite often have to phone up and ask our printers to extend our deadlines, which obviously means reducing their own production times."
One challenge Intent’s printers might be able to lend more help with in the future, is with the company’s digital platforms and products. Moody explains that the company’s website and digital edition platforms have been purpose-built for Intent and so work very well, but might not be considered the most cost-effective way of doing things in the future.
"All the printers have got offerings now, which we’ve looked at; they all seem to have really invested quite a lot in that side of things so it’s certainly something that could happen," says Moody. "With the digital offerings from the printers, quite often they’re very user-friendly and can be adapted quite easily for different things, so that could be something we start using more."
The Church of London
The company The Church of London is a creative agency specialising in communication, based in Shoreditch, London. Although the 15-strong company is diversifying into other areas, with a new events space for example, publishing remains its central focus.
Print needs The company publishes two regular magazines, indie film title Little White Lies, and youth culture magazine huck. Both are bi-monthly with readerships of 45,000. Both highly design-led (and with huck highly photography-led) the look of the finished products is key, reports publishing manager Hannah El-Boghdady.
The Church of London also produces a whole range of customer magazines, coffee table books, fanzines and mini magazines for corporate clients. The company also showcases its creativity with occasional one-off projects such as The Good Times newspaper, produced to cheer people in the east London area on Monday 16 January, allegedly the most depressing day of the year.
The printers The company uses a fairly wide roster of printers, including Buxton, Advent Colour, Push and The Newspaper Club. "For in-house jobs we tend to stick with the same printers, but I talk to new printers all the time just to see if they do have competitive quotes or other things they can offer us that people we’re using at the moment can’t. I like to have a really good catalogue of people we can go to for client work," says El-Boghdady.
It might seem a simple thing, but the speed with which printers turn around quotes can make or break a burgeoning relationship, says El-Boghdady. "One thing that is quite vital is the turnaround times for quotes. It might not be a priority for everyone, but sometimes we’ll get jobs where we only have a few hours to get costs to a client," she says.
The challenges Of real value to The Church of London, is help in ensuring the agency’s carefully thought-out designs really look their best. So colour is critical.
"One thing which it would be even nicer to have some help with in the future from different printers would be advice about how to get the colour correction just right, especially when using different paper stocks, so the pictures still pop," says El-Boghdady. "Quite a few of our printers are really good at that, but others haven’t been as vocal or given as much advice. We’d value advice on making sure the right stock was used for the pieces we’re doing, especially when there’s a lot of black used."
"And just allowing the ink to dry is also important," she adds. "Ink having been left to dry for the right amount of time just makes such a difference to the final quality of the magazine."
Colour-matching is particularly critical for corporate client projects, reports El-Boghdady, as these are often magazine-cum-brochures. "We produce printed publications for Pock, a sportswear company. Those are magazines that turn into a brochure halfway through," she says. "Getting the specs right for that client in particular is maybe the most challenging, just because they have quite a few requirements in making sure it’s promoting their products in the best way."
While it’s crucial the agency’s printers offer advice on how to realise particularly ambitious and creative briefs, it’s also important that they clearly explain what’s not possible and, where needed, help communicate this to the client.
"There are a lot of requirements that Pock asks for which aren’t necessarily possible," says El-Boghdady. "Our printers are really helpful in making sure we get it as close as possible to what the client wants, while letting them know when the materials aren’t there."
The 35th issue of youth culture mag huck also benefitted from a pragmatic approach from one of the agency’s printers. "We wanted to make it a really beautiful issue; we had a bit more budget to spend so the editorial design team wanted five gate-folds and a whole range of different folds including a roll-fold, but it was another case where it wasn’t quite possible," says El-Boghdady. "But Buxton was great. They suggested taking quite a few out. Because we use Buxton continuously on this magazine we can trust their opinion, so when they give suggestions we know that it’s probably the right thing. In the end it came out as a really nice issue."
