Other Responsibilities

As team leader and head of the business, I had a lot of other responsibilities that the other members of the team didn't have. There were many aspects of the business that needed overseeing that stretched further than just the design work that was submitted. Below are a list of the other responsibilities I had during the project.

Advertising:
Since the whole project, including the printing and any money needed for extra costs (such as t-shirts for distributors or box dispensers), I had to organize a way in which to get people to advertise in the magazine for a small fee. I organized a small publishing company called Cornerstone Vision to help with the advertising, due to the fact their magazines are fairly well established in the city and their client base was rather large - which was very useful! I even got involved in selling advertising myself, ringing up various businesses and using social networking to get a sale. It was a really interesting experience since I normally hate using phones, so it definitely helped me get over that fear.

Admin:
To maintain an organized environment to create the magazine in, I had to do a lot of admin work to make sure that everything ran smoothly. This meant keeping on top of emails, organizing files, making sure everyone who was to attend the meetings did so and knew all the relevant information, and other smaller jobs that if I didn't do them, they wouldn't get done!

Finance:
Myself and Jess opened up a partner business bank account, so when it came to paying print bills or receiving money from clients for adverts, we had a place to put it all, rather than using a separate company. This involved lots of trips to the bank, at the beginning, our application struggled to get processed, as well as to pay in checks we'd received etc.

Distribution:
You can have the greatest magazine in the world, with the best content and the most beautiful design, but without people to read it, it's worth nothing. With help from my Dad, who's got experience in this side of publishing, we organized three different ways to get our free magazine to the hands of students. This was by producing 20,000 magazines, and having 5,000 delivered through doors (paid for, through the same company who helped with advertising, Cornerstone Vision), 5,000 in stockists (ie, shops and businesses) and the remaining 10,000 being handed out by volunteers and at various Fresher's events. Distribution is a whole job in itself, and so I definitely needed the help to keep this from going completely wrong, and it's definitely where improvement could be used most in the future.

Overseeing EVERYTHING!:
As I was responsible for everything running smoothly with this project, I had to maintain control over every aspect, so to make sure no problems arose. I had to maintain contact with every member of the team, as well as any contributors that wanted to get involved. This took up a lot of time to keep juggling everyone's responsibilities as well as my own, listed above. It even boiled down to the small details of production, such as making sure everything was proof read before being sent to print and double checking that every picture in the layout was high resolution and CMYK.