KC Star launches new free tab
Charles Gooch of The Kansas City Star writes:
Today was the launch day for the Star’s new publication, Ink — a magazine for 20- and 30-somethings that’s free and hits the news rack every Wednesday.
The design was concocted and carried out by Tasha Fabela-Jonas in house with help from uber-talented designer/copy editor/music critic Elizabeth Garcia. Those of you familiar with CCI can sympathize with how tedious this process was.
It’s geared toward the young professional primarily with plenty of
networking/career/dating/night-life advice, but deals also in entertainment and off-the-beaten path news.The Web site — a combination news site, entertainment site and social network — has been online for almost a month and can be found at www.inkkc.com.
You can also find a ton of blogs there too.
 
 
Lookin’ good, there, Goochmeister. I especially like that debut cover. That should move a few copies out of the racks.
The pages Gooch sent seem especially well-thought-out for color choices. The sports page, in particular, is just gorgeous.
Is it possible to color-coordinate inside color pages with adjacent ads? I doubt it can be done every day on most pages. But it sure is attractive.
Ink looks like a fun read. Best wishes to all the folks involved.
—
UPDATE
Charles answered a few questions for me.
Judging by the names of the original PDF files he sent me, this seemed like a huge publication. I asked him how many pages the first week’s issue contained, plus a few questions about color positions and staffing.
Gooch replies:
The first issue was 96 pages. We’ll have some shrinkage, but as of right now, it’s not officially set. (I’m estimating about 68-80 something.) Judging by the first run, it’s going to be heavy on color as 68 out of 96 were full color. (Also thanks to our new-fangled press, it’s stapled.)
Stapled! Holy cow!
Ink has as staff of 8. An editor, deputy editor, three reporters, a photographer, a copy editor and a designer. A web producer is probably on the way, but not set just yet. From the design standpoint, it’s being put together by just the copy editor and designer. Star personnel are downstairs away from the hip Ink lair.
Copy wise, the three reporters are doing the heavy lifting (a few stories each and a column here and there) with the editors Laurie Mansfield and Lindsay Hanson Metcalf pitching in on the running items. Also, features designer Neil Nakahodo has a gaming blog/column, copy editor/designer Pam Spencer is doing a dating column/blog, sports copy editor/designer Greg Moore is handling sports and I’m writing movie reviews.
Very nice, man. Thanks for the info.
I have to give a shoutout to my old friend Laurie. I worked with her in Des Moines. She was extremely bright, aways full of ideas and very eager to work with us visual types. One features project I worked on with her — how to speed-clean your home, illustrated with my daughter’s Polly Pocket doll collection — is still in my portfolio.
Again: Best wishes to the whole crew at Ink.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Beautiful! A lot to like and smart plan to soft-launch with a social net. Send me some copies, Gooch!
April 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Wide format web sites are hard to use with horizontal scrolling, that’s my first reaction and the section labels are weak and hard to read in their vertical serif format.
The section breakdowns are nice but the site doesn’t immediately tell me it’s socially networked. The padding is pretty high but overall I think I might watch it evolve and gather some meatier content in about a month.
BTW, huge congratulation on producing the product with eight people. I think the topics are going in the right direction for the audience and the print design is sexy. What comes next?