Tag Archives: GQ

GQ takes home two Maggies including Overall Winner

Men’s fashion magazine GQ was recognised twice in this year’s Maggie Awards, which celebrate the magazine industry’s best covers.

GQ won the top prize of Overall Winner, and the magazine’s September 2009 issue cover, which featured Sienna Miller, claimed them victory in the Fashion category.

Judging panel chairman Jim Bilton said the winning cover, which fronted one of the magazine’s most successful issues of the year, was “a textbook example of great cover design”.

“So good, it looks completely effortless, but a great deal of skill has gone into the execution of a cover which combines beautiful photography and strong coverlines,” he said.

Other winners included Metal Hammer in the Entertainment category and Beano in the Youth category.

Over 40,000 votes were cast to decide the winners.

See the winning covers here….

MinOnline: GQ sells just 365 copies of iPad edition

The Conde Nast title, one of the first to appear on the iPad, sold 365 copies of its December ‘Men of the Year’ issue. Priced at $2.99 per download, which is $2 less than the print edition’s price, this totals $1,091.35. Not the salvation the newspaper and magazine publishing industries might have hoped for, but publisher Pete Hunsinger is happy with the result, reports MinOnline:

This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage (…) Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation.

Full story at this link…

(via Mashable)

Condé Nast launches monthly GQ iPhone app

Following in the footsteps of the Guardian, GQ’s magazine has announced its first monthly application for the iPhone.

According to a report from paidContent.org, the US version of the app, which offers an exact replica of the magazine, has been approved by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), which means purchases of the app will count towards the magazine’s circulation figure.

Unlike the Guardian, where a one-off fee is paid for unlimited access to content, in the UK GQ is charging £1.79 for each edition.

Publisher of GQ, Conde Nast, is also reportedly planning more iPhone apps for its other magazine titles.

Gawker: Crowdsourcing a translation of GQ’s Putin article

Last week Gawker asked readers to help it translate an article into Russian from Conde Nast’s GQ, which the publisher reportedly went to great lengths to prevent from being read in Russia, because it contained criticisms of Vladimir Putin.

A full translation of the article has been completed and the process behind it can be read about at this link.

Issues of copyright and press freedom arise from this – Journalism.co.uk will be contacting Gawker to find out more.

FIPP 09: Downturn is the conference buzzword – but is the mag industry facing up to it?

Yesterday at the FIPP World Magazine Conference, William Kerr, board chairman at Meredith Group suggested that ‘being 12 per cent down is the new up’.

The wider economic downturn and the gap between online and traditional offline advertising revenues in the magazine industry have been referred to in every panel I’ve attended so far (though more often than not it’s referred to as ‘challenging times’). But has the mag industry faced facts?

Dylan Jones, editor of GQ, doesn’t seem to think so:

“When we come out of this recession many industries will be the same, but the mass market motor industry and the newspaper industry will be changed forever,” Jones told delegates.

“There are many people in the magazine industry who think it won’t effect them, but we could equally be having these conversations in two or three years time about the magazine industry.”

There will be more cost-cutting, in particular staff reductions, as the industry realises the impact, he added. (GQ’s publisher Conde Nast reportedly axed five per cent of its US magazine staff last October)

For other’s the downturn is a huge opportunity for innovation and restructuring. Google’s UK MD, Matt Brittin, predicted that the current climate would accelerate certain types of user behaviour online. For example, the use of search and free technologies to create their own content.

The challenge for publishers is to monitor these changes and respond to the consumers’ changing needs online – often by embracing new, free technologies themselves, but also by finding new ways to serve up their content that will be found through specific search queries, for instance, or relating to niche topics.

According to Brittin, opportunities exist – with Google’s help of course – within the ‘first downturn in a truly digital age’.

FIPP 09: How magazines learned to love the web – Grazia and GQ discuss

Journalists at Grazia are experimenting with a host of real-time reporting tools and techniques, the magazine’s editor-in-chief explained at today’s FIPP World Magazine Congress.

Jane Bruton told delegates of her excitement that reporters were twittering live updates from fashion shows and filing web copy from events.

“We can talk to our readers on a minute-by-minute basis. We get instant feedback if we want to test out a story for our magazine – we can go online, we can go on Twitter,” said Bruton.

“Our fashion teams now – rather than sitting and taking notes – they’re Twittering from the front row, they’re running to the car, typing up instant web reports.

“The readers love it because they’re seeing everything through our eyes.”

Certain elements of the magazine are now web-first, for example, the pictures from the Style Hunter section, which attract hundreds of comments a week from readers.

“They [readers] feel involved, feel closer to the brand and feel closer to us as personalities. We’ve never been afraid of exposing the inner workings of the magazine,” said Bruton, who said the same exposure had been created offline when the magazine spent a week operating in a shopping centre.

“In the current climate the fact that people relate to our personalities and trust our brand is really crucial.”

For fellow panelist and GQ editor Dylan Jones, the key to online success is capturing the same luxury of the print magazine online, he said.

Being online has not changed the editorial stance of the magazine, which has remained central to the design of the website: “I think we’ve cracked it,” he added.

Read: BBC Good Food editorial director Gillian Carter on why the web hasn’t affected print sales.