What do you do for a living?
I am Creative and Publishing Manager for Connect, a media company based in Paisley. I joined Connect 10 years ago when I merged my own publishing company CMYK Design with them, bringing long-established clients.
I work two days a week now. I started my magazine career as an editorial designer, accidentally slipping into writing, editing, publishing and even ad sales along the way.
What does that mean day-to-day?
I manage, edit and design two magazines. One is a quarterly decorating magazine for the Scottish Decorators’ Federation (Decorating Matters) that I relaunched in 2021, and The Keeper, a bi-annual trade whisky magazine for an organisation called the Keepers of the Quaich. I have worked on that since 2002. I started as a designer and now edit and design the 80-page magazine.
Now that I only work two days a week, I have to be super organised, planning for the year and enforcing deadlines. For Decorating Matters, I attend trade shows, speak to decorators, suppliers and manufacturers, visit live decorating jobs to see how things are done and formulate the content of the magazine from what I have learned. I am not a decorator, but I hope that I know what decorators want to read about.
Similarly with The Keeper – I meet with the client, discuss any hot topics or activity in the industry, and commission features based on these discussions. Once all that content is in, I design all the pages, using a mixture of sourced, stock and commissioned photography or illustration. I somehow manage to do all that in two days a week. I am actively looking for other projects to fill the other three days as a freelancer – whether that be as a designer, editor or consultant…
What do you love about magazines?
I love that magazines can be created from just an idea. When I was at primary school, our teacher set us a project to create a magazine. My (rather ambitious offering) was called: The History of the World from 1900-1960! I still have it. Held together with staples, glue and wool.
I love the curatorial element of magazines – deciding what to put in and leave out. And of course, the end result – a beautifully printed publication, that hopefully, someone will buy, enjoy and keep.
Photo Credit: Andrew Johnston
Tell us one thing not many people know about you?
My band once supported Duran Duran on their first UK tour.
Where can we connect with you?
You can email me at neil@cmyk-design.co.uk or call me on 07957 144156. I also have a magazine/design blog.