WHAT WORKING FOR A MAGAZINE IS REALLY LIKE

November 18, 2016 in Career, job, life, Lifestyle, magazine, work

Read Time:2 Minute, 51 Second

I don’t want to mislead you lovely folk so I should probably start this post by saying no, sadly I did not work for Vogue or Cosmopolitan so if you’re looking for some Devil Wears Prada goss then you won’t find it here. However, I did work for a UK gossip/entertainment/beauty/fashion magazine, you know the kind that usually featured a TOWIE celeb or Kimmy K on the cover.

I worked at this magazine for a year as a junior designer and was taken on before that as an Art Intern for approx 6 months and it was such a crazy experience. I’ve always wanted to work for a magazine ever since I fell in love with Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port from The Hills. Get me a cute headband, sit me in front of an iMac and I am all yours! Of course now my life is super different and I wouldn’t change that for anything but let me share with you just what working in publishing was like…

Everyone was really nice

Okay so there were some people that I maybe didn’t get to know as well as some others but overall everyone that worked at the mag were really lovely, I made some great friends there who I keep in touch with on good old Facebook still and people were super normal. For some odd reason I expected a cold, frosty atmosphere but it was the opposite.

You don’t have any much creative say-so

It might have been slightly delusional of 20-year-old me to swan into a publishing job and be given free reign to do whatever I pleased with artwork and design but I was hoping that it wouldn’t be so regimented and uniform with the layouts, fonts, colours and design but it was. I won’t lie, there would be certain pages like large fashion spreads that allowed for a little creativity but generally it wasn’t too inspiring.

Beauty sales were the best thing ever, ever. Ever.

So magazines get sent a LOT of products. All sorts passed through the doors of our magazine and ended up on the beauty editors desk be it make-up, fragrances, hairdryers, you name it. When the products were either tweeted about or featured for the magazine they ended up in the ‘beauty cupboard’ and every few months the beauty cupboard would get cleared out and boxes upon boxes of products, electrical and more would be on sale. You’d fill a large shopping bag and pay £10 for the lot and be the proud owner of plenty of new make-up (which most of the time didn’t match your skin tone at all but hello, it was practically free!?)

It taught me so much

Although I wasn’t at the mag for too long (the pay wasn’t great and the commute was a bitch) I learnt so, so much about where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. I also learnt a lot of useful skills when it came to my graphic, web design and even writing/proofing knowledge and I still use lots of the little tweaks and tricks eve now.

If you’re looking to get into the industry then I would totally recommend it, it was an incredible learning curve for me and if you’re looking to get your foot in the door then internships and work experience is the place to start!