Frequently Asked Questions

(This is intended for the contributors to 24Hour Magazine but may be interesting to everyone)

Concept

24Hour Magazine is about a magazine and a moment. It is about both the end product and the 24 hours it takes to get there. It is as much about the experience as the magazine. Like a middle distance race, it is about both speed and endurance. It combines the youthful stamina for a college all nighter with the professional focus of creating a commercial magazine. The atmosphere will be both a (very) long day at work and an all night party. 24 Hours, from nothing to everything, scratch to finish, idea to product.

At the bare facts, 24Hour Magazine will be a magazine created by a team of designers, photographers, writers and artists in a single 24 hour period. 24H DAY will start at 3pm (Central Europe Time), June 27 and end 3pm June 28th. Before that time, there will be nothing more than plans, ideas and enthusiasm. At the end of that time, we will have a final magazine, completed and ready for the printing press. Not a single picture or word in 24Hour Magazine will have existed before June 27th.

And since the experience plays such an important role, the 24H TEAM will be sharing that experience with the world, making everyone a part of the fun and the drama for 24 hours.. We will have live video feeds from 24H HEADQUARTERS, twitter updates by the 24H TEAM, various blog posts and pictorial updates of the evolving design. After the 24H DAY, the experience will be made real to readers through videos documenting the full experience of making the magazine.

Time and Place

We are already working hard on planning and scheduling for the magazine and everyone is going to make a different. As you know, the big idea behind this project is to create a complete magazine in just 24 hours. The clock starts at 3pm June 27th Central Europe Time (that is 9am US Eastern Time) and we will have a locked down magazine ready to go to print at 3pm June 28th. Therefore, it is very important that you are sure you can participate that weekend. If not, please email us right away at team [at] 24hourmagazine [dot] com so we can fill your spot on the team.

Our operations headquarters will be in Kortrijk, Belgium. The editorial team, graphic designers, IT & web team, and photographers will all be working from this location. We encourage everyone else to join us in Kortrijk as well. However, if we have already talked to you about working from someplace else or if you want to talk about special arrangements, let us know.

Why Join us in Kortrijk?

This is not just about having a magazine at the end. If it was, we’d take 3 months to make it. This is about a magazine that captures and reflects a moment, a single creative period, and a shared experience. Something a little crazy, kind of intense, and really fun. We will be sharing that experience with the world through live video feeds, updates via twitter, facebook, and blogs, and we will be creating a “making of” DVD. But as team members, we want you to not just see the moment, but to be the moment. The location is a 100m2 room that will have a bar, couches, full internet access, tables for working, a photography space, makeup and dressing area, and a pool table. This is where our computer servers will be setup, our design team will do their work, our IT team will maintain our internet presence, and we will serve meals and drinks (remember, we said it had a bar!). This is where the cheers will go up when the clock strikes 3pm on Sunday. This is where you’ll want to be.

The Team

So we keep talking about the 24H TEAM, but what will it look like? The various creative talent can roughly be organized into 7 groups.

Editorial team
This is the small, core team driving the direction of the magazine. Each of us bring additional skills and will participate in design and content as well. We will consult with all team members to give a general direction and consistent flow each of their projects. The whole editorial team will be at 24H HEADQUARTERS in Kortrijk.

Design team
These are the creative members that will design the over all layout, individual contributions, and the website. They are graphic designers, art directors, and web designers. They will all be at 24H HEADQUARTERS.

Photographers
24Hour Magazine will have picture editorials (fashion, accessories, etc.), ads (which may be fake or real), pictures to accompany each article, and behind the scenes photos. Each photographer will likely work on 2 or 3 different projects through out the 24 hours. The editorial team will assign the projects at the start of 24H DAY and then sit down with each photographer for a short brainstorm session before every shoot to develop the theme. The photographers will all be based out of 24H HEADQUARTERS with photoshoots in the surrounding area.

Fashion team
This will consist of the Fashion designers, models, stylists, makeup artists, and hair stylists. They will mostly work in collaboration with a photographer to develop all of the photography in the magazine. Models, makeup artists and hairstylists will be based at 24H HEADQUARTERS. Fashion designers and stylists may work from 24H HEADQUARTERS or from somewhere else, depending on how they are contributing.

Writers
These team members will be writing the articles for 24Hour Magazine. The articles may be everything from a standard journalistic piece, to a book review, to a description of creating a recipe in a single day. Each of the writers will only have one assignment during the 24 hours so they have time to develop their ideas then draft, review and edit their piece. General ideas may be discussed beforehand, but final topics will be distributed to the writers at 3pm CET, June 27th. We are also hoping to add a copy editor to this team for final proof reading. This group will be more spread out. We encourage writers to join the 24H HEADQUARTERS (and will make quiet space available for writing), but the diversity of subjects and geography will mean many are spread out across the world.

IT-crew
We will have a robust technology system for both creating the magazine and supporting our web presence. The IT team is already working hard on our backend website, blog, twitter accounts, and live video streams. They will also be creating file systems and internal servers for keeping track of the content, designing the magazine, tracking schedules, and displaying the 24 hour countdown.

Operations
The operations team will be in charge of everything else including food, drinks, transportation, and organizing each projects team and schedule. They will all be in 24H HEADQUARTERS.

Costs and Credit

We truly appreciate each of you volunteering your time and skills. The editorial team is creating 24Hour Magazine as a labor of love and we are also volunteering our time and paying for all of the costs up front. At the end of the 24H DAY, we will have a magazine to sell (likely online). It will only be priced a little above the cost of printing and all extra money will go into covering the cost of supplies and printing new copies. We will credit each contributor in the magazine and on the website.

We are also looking for sponsors or advertisers. Again, any sponsorship or advertisement would only be used for pre-printing costs (which will be the biggest expense) and supplies. We would appreciate any help team members can providing in finding sponsors or advertisers. The more we can get, the more copies we can print, allowing us to distribute your hard work to more people in places.

Do I have to stay up 24 hours?

A lot of people on the 24H TEAM see this as one of the highlights and a part of the challenge, but not everyone will need to be awake the whole time. The editorial, design, IT and operations teams will be up for the full 24H DAY (and to be honest, this is what sold many of us on the project). The photographers and fashion team are not required to be awake the whole time, however in order to get the content complete in time for the design team to finish its work, there will be photo shoots scheduled throughout the night (you are free to take a nap during your free time, we’ll have alarms to make sure you are up in time for your 3am photoshoot). Writers will have more flexibility with just a few deadlines, with the final product provided to the design team about 18 to 20 hours after the start of 24H DAY so that the design team can spend the last hours fitting it into the layout.

Where will people be able to purchase 24Hour Magazine?

We are still working on distribution models. The ideal situation would be to make it available for sale both online and through select book stores. Much of this will depend on the funding available for pre-printing. These factors will also affect the price, though we expected it to be somewhere between 20 and 30 Euro. Other possibilities are to include a “making of” DVD and to print special “limited edition” versions at a high quality and higher price point (while still offering standard priced versions too).

What are my commitments as part of 24H TEAM?

We understand everyone is busy and you are volunteering your time for this project. The main commitment will be to be available on June 27th. We will try limiting email updates for the team to one email every week or two. Additionally, we will speak or email with each of you individually.