London College of Communication blog

London College of Communication (LCC) MA Publishing student Gabriela Sanchez-Curiel is to showcase her new international publishing enterprise at The London Book Fair on Wednesday 18 April at 2.30pm in the Thames Room.

The London Book Fair

She is one of eight leading innovators from around the globe who will present at the Innovation Translated: A Global Snapshot of Today’s Publishing Innovators seminar. Each will showcase an idea, project or publication that demonstrates how they are innovating in their national markets.

Sanchez-Curiel is a Mexican graphic designer and new publisher. She has twelve years of industry experience, five of which spent in the magazine publishing sector, and most recently at Times Warner Inc. in Mexico City. While studying for her Masters at LCC she founded Global Transmedia Publishing. Her business model is based on offering a range of creative publishing services to clients globally who do not have the expertise or skills to realize their objectives, in either print or digital media, or both.

The London Book Fair is the leading trade exhibition for rights negotiation and the sales and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels. The three day event takes place at London’s Earls Court from Monday 16 – Wednesday 18 April. Admission is free if you register online as ‘student’ status. £30 saving!

Carolyn Jones, a student from the MA Publishing course at London College of Communication (LCC), has been awarded the Macmillan Student Achievement Award. The prize, a cheque of £750, was presented by Macmillan’s Deputy Chairman, Mike Barnard, at the student-led Publishing Innovation Conference held at the College on 9th March 2012.

Carolyn Jones receiving award from Mike Barnard of Macmillan

The annual prize is awarded to the student who achieves the highest overall grade on the MA Publishing course.  During the course she and fellow students created Yuppie, a self-published digital and print magazine covering arts, culture, current affairs and fashion. The magazine has now launched two issues with Carolyn at the helm as the creative director. Her high scoring thesis – A Digital Approach to Brand Management within the Luxury Magazine Market – examined the importance of building relationships with readers through digital platforms.

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On Thursday 8th March London College of Communication (LCC) is hosting iGeneration, the eighth annual Publishing Innovation Conference by MA Publishing students, sponsored by Macmillan. The conference will address the rise of self-publishing and the debates it is inspiring within the industry. The annual Student Achievement Prize, a cheque of £500, will be presented at the conference by Anthony Forbes Watson, managing director of Pan Macmillan Publishers.

Two panels, made up of both industry speakers and self-publishers, including writers, photographers and bloggers will discuss how self-publishing is affecting the traditional self-publishing model. Confirmed speakers include: Jeremy Leslie creative director at magCulture, Alison Baverstock, author of The Naked Author: Guide to Self-Publishing, Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn and Ewan Morrison, author, whose recent article in the Guardian tracks the self-epublishing bubble.

Desmond O’Rourke, LCC MA Publishing course director, says: “The theme for the conference project this year really resonates with the turmoil and challenges going on within the industry. With rapid e-reader and digital tablet adoption, where anyone can be a publisher, roles are blurring between amateur and professional. This conference will give insights into these challenges for writers, creative content producers, publishing professionals and students alike.”

iGeneration has been organised as part of the MA Publishing professional practice module by students: Claire Muirhead, Megan Phillips, Stine Gjevnøe Sørensen, Victor Egenti, Katie Jones and Hennal Valand.

The conference is free and takes place in the Podium Lecture Theatre at London College of Communication on Thursday the 8th March from 4 – 8pm.

Book your place at the conference at www.publishinginnovation.com

Join in the debate via Twitter: @iGeneration2012 or on Facebook: Publishing Innovation Conference 2012

Wired magazine is announced as the best digital magazine of the year at the 2011 Digital Magazine Awards held at London College of Communication on 14 December.

Other winners announced included British Vogue in the fashion magazine category and The New Yorker in the news and business category.

The awards’ showcase event hosted at LCC, in collaboration with the MA Publishing course, can be viewed at their website.

LCC’s MA Publishing course is hosting the talk: Design and Publish: the Future on iPad with Dan Logan, Technical Product Manager at Quark. Logan, coming over from the Unites States, will talk to LCC students about iPad publishing in the Main Lecture Theatre on Thursday 27 October from 2 until 3pm.

The lecture will emphasize the core design process, the ease of ‘enrichment’, the ease of publishing to the iPad, and how much (or rather how little) it costs to get QXP/App Studio publications onto the App Store – especially for education users.

Quark recently won the Publishing Product of the Year award for QuarkXPress with App Studio at the MacUser Awards event.  App Studio is the iPad part of Quark’s publishing process and produced QuarkXPress 9.1 which, according to the industry, provides people with the easiest, most creatively accessible, and most affordable way to design and publish to the iPad.

MA Publishing students held their Publishing Challenge event at The Book Club in Shoreditch on 20 July 2011.

The event exhibited student’s self- published books and magazine titles and presentations and discussions were available throughout the night.

Speaking about the event Course Director, Desmond O’Rourke said:

“The New Publishers 2011 Show clearly demonstrated the  creativity and publishing skills of our talented MA publishing students. The show was excellent, and I hope the course will host it annually in the future.”

Work by London College of Communication (LCC) guest exhibitors and alumni were on show and an auction for the student published book ABC also took place. The book raised £75 on the night for the British Red Cross.

The ABC Book Project is produced, managed and designed by nine MA Publishing students and launched at an exhibition held at The Book Club, East London on Wednesday 20 July 2011.

Put together by the students as a means of showcasing contemporary illustration the book features the work of 26 visual artists. Each artist uses the familiarity of the alphabet to transform a letter in to an image that tests the imagination.

The exhibition was used to sell the books, which each have an individually screenprinted cover. The book raised £75 which is to be donated to the British Red Cross. As well as being the launch of the ABC Book Project the exhibition showcased new and self published books by students from the London College of Communication. (LCC)

Students involved in the project are Sarah Masterson Hally, Beulah Maud Devaney, Lydia Merrills-Ashcroft, Frida Brandel Green, Celeste Ward-Best, Candy Day, Kate Wilkinson, Roz Gomersall and Ferdinand Fabre.

Zoë Foster (left) with friends from the MA Publishing course

Zoë Foster, a recent graduate from the MA Publishing course at LCC, has won the Macmillan Student Achievement Prize. The award, a certificate and £500 cheque, was presented by Macmillan Deputy Chairman Mike Barnard at the 2011 Publishing Innovation Conference held at LCC.

Sponsored by Macmillan, the annual prize is awarded to the student who achieves the overall highest grade on the MA Publishing course – Zoë was top of the 65 students on the 2009/10 course.

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Before Christmas we learned that one of our MA Publishing graduates, Tenisha Anderson, has won an award for her newly launched fashion magazine Qlix. From her home in Chicago, Tenisha tells all about about her covetable “mag in a bag,” and reveals plans for world domination!

Can you tell me about the experience of winning this award, and what it means for you?
To be honest I was really shocked that we had received such an award, but being a “new kid on the block” in print publishing it always is a good feeling to get recognized for the work that we do.

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In an era where media is becoming ever-increasingly digitalised (irony noted), it is refreshing to see printed publications championed, and more specifically, independent publishers of the LCC alumni persuasion.

Tenisha Anderson graduated from LCC’s MA Publishing programme in 2006 and her magazine, Qlix, has been heralded one of the 15 Hottest Magazine Launches of the year by Media Industry News (min) in New York.

Based in Chicago, Qlix is an independent fashion publication dedicated to all emerging talents and concepts within the fashion realm; with themed issues such as ‘Fresh’ and ‘Fantasy’. But with new magazines springing up all the time, united in passion for print but vying for shelf space all the same, an original concept is the all-important factor if you want people to take notice. Tenisha solved this equation with an unconventional envelope format, going “mag in a bag”, with multiple inserts and fold outs that create a portable and collectible publication as well as providing the reader with a kinaesthetic experience.

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