The opportunities offered by new media technologies mean that anyone can be a media maker today. This has led to an explosive growth in the range of content available, but this content is largely ephemeral: stories quickly disappear in the overwhelming stream of media and are hard to remember or retrieve. In the face of the huge and continuous stream of new content, it is vital to determine which stories have the value to enduringly appeal to a target audience and thus stand the test of time. These are the stories that deserve a future.
In this 20-week Challenge, you and your fellow students will design and produce a physical print product which you will bring to market. It could be anything from a zine, a magazine, or a bookazine to an anthology of poems or a series of pamphlets. Your print product will contain stories that have a long life because they have future value. Besides creating your print product, you will also work on generating sales of your product during the time frame of this Challenge and will design and implement a promotional campaign to help these sales. You will create online content for your campaign such as video, photography, text, computer animation and other forms of suitable content. You will also do market research, develop a sales strategy, and create and implement an operational marketing plan.
Your group will be responsible for the entire process from design, editing, and production to sales, marketing and logistics. You will participate in the group process but will also be individually responsible for one or more aspects of the production process. Working together effectively and efficiently will be of course an essential part of this. You will learn and be inspired by doing market and theoretical research and studying business models and new media.
To be successful you will need to be entrepreneurial, creative and innovative. You will need to plan and think ahead and have a keen sense of the market value of stories. You will need to be flexible and able to switch easily between online, offline and back to online. You will have an affinity with all forms of media, especially print media, and finally, you will of course have a passion for making media.
Your six months in this Challenge will in short be exciting, rewarding and – challenging!
A study trip to Oxford is part of the programme of this challenge. Costs: 450 euro
In this stone you'll create: