Issuu is a wonderful platform to publish as well as read magazines. The biggest plus point is that you get to read a magazine like a magazine and not like some pdf file. It is still a upstart but the concept is amazing. Let's see if they can monetize their offering!
Well back to the magazine! It sometime happens that a work is done on it's own. Havn't we all had a feeling when everything happens at its own accord, ( situations happen, ideas arise, one thing leads to another) and we merely play a part. Such was the case with this magazine also. We did not do any brainstorming. Just a casual chat led to the designing of logo ( it is good )- the only thought behind it was that it should look good and embrace the colors of our batch : peppy, full of zest, and with an ambition to rule the world. Similarly the cover design. At first we had decided to bring out an issue with ideas as the central theme, but our talk all of a sudden came to stop on dreams, since placements would soon start and everyone would have started some sort of dreaming. So now we had been struck on what cover page should we choose. This was on 29th evening if I remember it right. So when i came back to my hostel, i was thinking all kinds of thoughts ( like showing a dark cover with a shard of light, showing a person's brain, show him standing, show him sleeping, show him staring upwards, show the back of a hand and what not ). It was only my failure to come out with any tangible solutions that led me to decide that we should leave the cover blank. Well our dreams are like that...blank...We can dream whatever we feel like.
But then a thought started that i should write dream in the centre...and before long it converted to Martin Luther's " I have a Dream". The original name thought out was Idea, then Imagine ( Innovation and design is the buzzword in management college these days, and so we were struck in a rut. While writing Imagine, i accidently put a dot after i. This led to its name becoming i.mag.in to show that we are from the class of eBiz and we live and breathe internet. The last e of the imagine had to go ( in could stand for India; mag is magazine; and i is internet, innovation, information, Individual : Oh how easy it is to do post facto analysis!)
It was on the first of october ( towards evening ) that an idea came to ask everyone what their dream was...and so sms was send to everyone asking them about their dreams. And it was heart warming to see the messages start arriving, and a bit disappointing that only 40 percent of the people thought about it. But it gelled beautifully with the final magazine ( we filled two sidebars with it! Now only if the people were more candid! ). The whole magazine was designed from scratch and made coherent whole by Ankit who worked the whole night trying different colour combinations and designs. It was fun passing the magazine in different stages, to and fro, among our council members. It was towards the morning that we decided to call it a day and leave 2-3 articles ( for today the attention span is getting shorter, and we did not want it to be a heavy read) out of the magazine.
To generate participation from our class we have instituted two quizzes ( Management & Stereo gram) , One caption contest and an online poll. We have decided to give away prizes also. Let's see if it works!
The experience on working for the magazine was wonderful and it did teach me a few things. One was delegation of work works wonderfully if you give your team members full freedom. Two, you should be flexible to let things take there own course ( with a firmness of vision ) and three, passion for work does wonderful things to you.
So this issue is behind us now. It is soon going to be history. Another day gone, yet many more days to come! I have been falling back on writing my diary entries, but i guess, i should not sweat over it. They will get written when they are meant to- just like the magazine. We indeed are actors on the stage called life! Oh! how right the master writer Shakespeare was!
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