Week 4-Late post!

Ok, this was definitely NOT something I had planned to do, and yes it is late but luckily nothing too staggering happened during this week so I can easily sum up the week's observations. Please try to imagine I wrote this at the end of week for!!

Week 4 was my last week and the second to last week for the Sketchbook Pop Up shop, which will be closing next Thursday. It was business as usual for much of the week, writing blog posts and still visiting a few press days. One of my solo outings included a visit to the Gucci Pop Up shop in Covent Garden on which I did a review, and have to admit was not very thrilling or impressive. It totally lacked in personality and certain wasn't very customer friendly...

But, disappointment aside, the most important function of the week had to be Sketchbook's presence at The Live Issue Launch, which was SB pop up shop's project manager, Rachel Menashy's peers' project. The idea was that it was supposed to resemble some sort of live magazine with designers, videos and examples of a/w10 collections and lots and lots of loud music. The whole night seemed a bit crazy and ambiguous, but it was Sketchbook's job to set up and area where we did some live blogging. We had to pull anyone we could out of the crowd (preferably someone better known) and interview them for a "5 minutes with" that was posted on the blog. We did struggle with the actual LIVE BLOGGING thing because there wasn't actually any internet, so there we sat on out laptops, typing people's answers and telling a white lie saying "yes we really are blogging this now..."The blogs did go up... just not until the morning! The event was fun, again I got to ask people's opinions on print and online publishing, but since the whole event was very much based around a wide range of mediums there was such a varied response. Of course, photographers all expressed how digital was the way forward, as did other bloggers, while the more romantic and old fashioned still seemed to lust after print.

Another development for the week, which we unfortunately managed to miss, was The Business of Fashion interviewing Jefferson Hack (creator of Dazed and Confused, Dazed Digital and AnOther Magazine) as the first installment of TBoF's Fashion Pioneers series. We missed going to the event which was held at the Sanderson Hotel in London on 29th April 2010 and discussed in detail the changing the fashion and publishing industry as we know it. Dazed Digital was one of the first online publications to hit the internet and who better to talk about it than the creator himself. Thankfully the video how now been uploaded back on to BoF's blog so I can go back and have a look at it for research purposes. It really struck a chord with Wafa though, she really has such an admiration for the development of the industry and I noticed how much she is keen to stay on top of what the BoF is talking about and, of course, other fashion and publishing pioneers.

The BoF, by the way, is a blog that looks at the development and news of brands, designers and anything to do with fashion, but with more of a business relevance.

Later in the week, on Thursday, I was in charge of running the shop while Wafa worked at Dia. That day we had a talk on my two of the blogging world's well know fashion street style bloggers, Street Style London and The Style Crusader. Two women, both American but very at home and comfortable with London life and style. The were running a work shop on how to improve your blog and how to make it really work for you. It was such an insightful discussion and everyone came away having picked up several tips and ready and raring to go away and sort their blogs out. Again, this had more relevance to online publishing and the development of self publishing. More and more people are turning to blogs, but with so many out there, how do you sort through them to find the one that is actually any good. An issue I am now starting to think of is how Sketchbook manages to keep itself different, unusual and independent of all other "typical" fashion blogs.


Before I left I managed to get  a good hour's interview and discussion with Wafa about Sketchbook Magazine, the blog and the pop up shop. I was trying to get her personal opinion on where she thought Sketchbook was headed and if she though, realistically she could make Sketchbook work carrying on in the same way, even when the pop up shop is gone (which seems to be one of the better known attributes to the brand). I asked her if she thought she would stay in one particular medium eventually, either print or digitial and of course, her opinion on the whole print vs digital battle and how the planned to run Sketchbook from the start. But you'll have to wait for the transcript and report to see what she told me.

Great placement and hopefully a successful case study - though I have a feeling an awful lot of it will be made up for discussing what i observed rather than hard, statistical proof.

Week 3: Day 3

Yesterday was a good day in terms of work. I didn’t feel too overloaded with work. I was at the Pop Up Shop on Newburgh Street and I, thankfully, got to spend most of the day working in the shop (rather than Starbucks) since the internet seemed to be working. I managed to finish writing up the Zoe and Morgan and Estethica pieces. Zoe and Morgan is now on the blog and hopefully with post the Estethica one today. Really, by now I should have finished and posted the Gucci pop up shop. I was meant to do it it last night but was so exhausted when I got in (after a bit of a nightmare travel back) that I couldn’t even remember some of the work I was meant to do for tomorrow. I will have to try and get some of it done on the train in this morning or when I first get to work, before Wafa comes.

Sketchbook is going to be doing a mural/ exhibition on the walls as you walk into Kingly Court on Carnaby Street – a little shopping arcade. This is really exciting as it gives the brand a chance to spread out and be noticed by more people. Next week, on Wednesday a few of us will be working at The Future Gallery at Trafalgar Square (used to be the Photographer’s Gallery). We’ll be doing live blogging at this event for artists, designers and speakers. Lots of on the spot interviewing and writing in a really amazing space. Wafa asked me to come along and help blog/ interview.

We drew up the schedule for the next for weeks today too. We have speakers coming from Selfridges, Betty Magazine, an exhibition from an artist called Annie Driscoll and another talk from famous fashion blogger, Susie Bubble of stylebubble.blogspot.com. I’m so excited to hear her speak, I’m an avid reader of her blog – she used to work as a writer at Dazed Digital, so she knows her stuff! But that week I’m working at The Times so I’m going to ask if it would be possible to leave at 5:30 that day so I can catch Susie’s talk at 6pm. Also, in June, Sketchbook have been asked to have an area at The Clothes Show Live. They’ve been given this huge area where they will be creating an experience on behalf of the Carnaby Quarter, and so far Wafa’s thinking wall murals and illustraions, photography, blogging, talks and workshops. I think this will be so exciting and, although I said I wouldn’t be able to come back to work in London for a little bit after The Times, I really do want to go back and carry on working with Sketchbook. Wafa wants me to come so much she even said she’d pay for my travel expenses, which is a such a generous offer although I don’t mind paying for that experience myself. It would be a great opportunity to meet lots of people in the fashion industry and also check out the Clothes Show for what I’m guessing would be a free ticket. I’m so happy that Wafa really wants me to be involved. I’ve promised her that I would love for her to carry on sending me work to do for her over the summer as it’s a good idea to keep busy and carry on writing.

I managed to talk to her about getting some information for my case study and she was more than happy to help. We had a quick chat about it at the end of the day and she said she was very happy I was using Sketchbook as a case study and gave me a few good ideas for a better research question. I’ll work it out a bit more with her, but she is happy to sit and chat about her ideas for Sketchbook and what’s been going on behind the scenes for hours. She really wants to help me out and in turn, I want to be able to help her. I love my work placement and 

Week 3: Days 1 and 2

Week 3: Days 1 and 2

Monday wasn’t too eventful. The author, who I had arranged an interview with for Wafa, came into the shop at 3pm for the talk. Other than that I spent most of the day in Starbucks, sending out a BCC’d email to all th people in the industry, fashion bloggers and additional speakers, guests and subscribers to the shop and magazine about the launch of the new issue.

I also wrote up some press day visits from last week but wasn’t able to post them on to the blog as of yet due to lack of images. In the morning before work I went to Covent Garden to visit the Gucci Pop Up Shop as Wafa wants me to write it up. It’s a traveling store with limited edition sneakers designed by DJ Mark Ronson and Freida… The shop was very pretencious and not at all fun to walk in to, other than they are the first and only place to have an ipad for scrolling through their special website dedicated to the shop. They also have an iMac and iPod for doing the same and from all three you can also place orders for the sneakers. The trainers, by the way, are disgusting and a lot of people seem to be in agreement. I feel a bit lazy at the moment as I really should have written up all these press days I’ve been to over the past week and written the Gucci shop one up today – but Im just so tired and inspiration/ motivation is hard to come by when you barely get to think about something other than work. The weekends fly by!

On Tuesday I went to work at Dia Boutique. Busy day, I’m pretty much doing the majority of the editing for the blog and magazine. Again, this involves subediting and finding new images for the pieces because people seem incapable of delivering decent images. I also wrote a piece for the blog over the weekend on some arts education, debate platform that happens in Beirut, Lebanon every other year. This was a really difficult thing for me to write about, since I’d never heard of it before, barely know Lebanon and I could barely make sense of what the website was on about. To make it harder, Wafa wanted me to write it in a personal way as though I had been along. Anyway, I clearly did a good enough job – so much that I earned myself a high five and an “Oh my god! Wow, it’s like you were actually there…!” which is quite an achievement considering the limitations! Anyway, that’s this week’s feature blog for the website, which is going up tomorrow.

I went for a walk with Wafa at lunch to grab some Lebanese food, a mission that ended in disappointment (we couldn’t find the restaurant). But we did manage to talk about some interesting things. Firstly, I had to break it to her that I wouldn’t be able to come back after my placement with The Times because it’s just too expensive for me to keep traveling up. She must be desperate to keep me on because she asked how much it cost me to travel up and then quickly followed that by offering to let me stay with her at her appartment. Quite crazy, and if I didn’t have to go back to Falmouth the sort things out for next year and do some favours for friends I would stay on. My only thing is, it’s quite working so hard like this for no financial gain. I guess I am sort of her No.2 at the moment and I pick up all the slack and sort out a lot of the work people send. I’m definitely not a PA though, the other girl who start the same time I did sits and sorts Wafa’s emails all day – at least I get to write all time.

She also asked me what I’d be doing at The Times, something I wish I knew too, but we both agreed we don’t think it’ll be anything like this placement. She then started telling me about all her internships for On/ Off and Vogue, amongst others. It was really something to have someone give me a personal experience of what it’s like to go through all that and come out the other side with a blossoming business at her fingure tips. She gave me some great tips and was very honest, but helpfully so – not so as to dishearten me. I have realised that she has worked hard all her early 20s and even had a horrific month where she work 9am-6pm at On/Off before going straight to Vogue, where she worked until about 12am-1am. That seems insane to me, but it’s clearly something a lot of people are willing to put themselves through to get the recognition.

I’m going to pose the idea of an interview with Wafa on Friday. Luckily, I do often get Wafa talking about what she has in store for the magazine. The shop, by the way, has become very quite since we haven’t got anything on the timetable. I wonder how this has affected the magazine. I heard her mention on Monday that some publishers will print 100 copies of Sketchbook for us to give out to free. This is a step in the direction I think a lot of independent magazines have take in the early days and it will help to get the word out a bit more about Sketchbook, although 100 copies won’t make an impact at all.

Week 2: Day 5

Friday was a pretty quiet day. I spent the majority of it in Starbucks again with workmate, Sophie. I was set quite a lot of work to do for Dia on top of having to write up the press days I went to earlier in the week.

In terms of the case study, which I have now realised has rarely been discussed in these posts, there’s a lot of development going on behind the scenes at Sketchbook.

Wafa is hoping to create an iphone app for Sketchbook and has been asking Sophie (PR) to get in touch with someone from Apple. She has mentioned that she wants apple to use Sketchbook as a ‘case study’, in other words I think she wants some sort of sponsorship. Although she has said she has found someone who would design the app for about £2000 or more. I will ask Sophie more about this and make notes.

The new issue is now available to read online, for free this time. You can also download it as a pdf for a price, as well as order a hard copy from the printers, MagCloud. I’m not exactly sure how this is helping the magazine’s future other than getting the publicity of it more hyped and spreading the word – making it more accessible to readers. But there seems to be an infinite amount of money and hard work being pumped into the publication and pop up shop, without any significant financial regain.

I want to quiz Wafa over her business plan and see how she wants to take Sketchbook further and in what context. At the moment there doesn’t seem to be a huge link between the pop up shop and the magazine. I want to see how she proposes to make money with the magazine and set up.

On another note, she has recently been granted the opportunity to publish Sketchbook the book. I think she is very much following the same pathway as Amelia Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Amelia Gregory. Amelia came to give a talk at the Pop Up Shop in my first week. She explained how she pretty much started her magazine all by herself with the help of a few friends. The magazine, which didn’t seem to run for very long and turned into more of a series of books based around art, illustration and very hippy ideology (not really my sort of thing) and is now mostly a website/ blog. It’s all a bit ambiguous and confusing as to what it’s trying to be. Unfortunately I feel like Sketchbook could easily fall into the same fate. But anyway, it would be interesting to see how Wafa deals with the book publication.

Week 2: Day 4

This morning I finished editing on the train up to London, a lot of the pieces for Dia are very poorly written, but it can be hard for me sometimes because everything has to be written in American English for them.

I jumped off the tube at Embankment and walked down to Somerset House. Loving the warm, sunny weather but still hating early starts – although I know it could be earlier. I met Sophie from work in the masive courtyard, she’s in PR and came along to help out and just take some time out from working in Starbucks – our, now, permanent-makeshift-office. I also invited a friend of mine to come along, thinking the function would be pretty big with good goody bags, since the invitation said who organised the bags and offered all antendees free massages by Aveda. We all met outside before going in and then walked around, again, talking to people about the collections, took photos and picked up press packs.

Estethica is run by the British Fashion Council and is their organising for supporting ethical fashion. This is a very dodgy end of the fashion market, and idea that people are initially interested in and then quickly realise that it’s still a bit of a disappointment. There were some good collecions there, but a lot of it is rubbish and now I know why Wafa told me not to get too excited about it. On a perkier note, Somerset house is really very beautiful and I’d like to go back at some point and check out all the other great exhibitions and functions it oftern holds.

I left Estethica at around 11:30am and travelled over to High Street Kensington to work at Dia. I spent the afternoon finishing all the subediting for the online magazine and editing images and creating thumbnails. It was all a bit tedious but good experience none the less. My piece on the new tea label in Lebanon is now up on the site and is one of the first links for the blog part of the magazine. Some reader has already commented on it too – it’s great to see this whole participatory journalism thing in action and be on the receiving end of it – it’s a positive thing I think, mostly.

I also came up with some questions to ask an architect in the USA so Wafa can interview him and rearranged an slot for her to interview an author. Something I think is really nice is Wafa and Rasha (owner of Dia Boutique) often ask for my opinion on things to improve their website and what I think the message is from the site. They do value what I think and so far I have come up with a few good points and ideas with what can be improved. I got into a discussion with Wafa about the architect’s work and this helped me come up with some better questions, evidently I had been slacking and tiredness had gotten the better of me – I was being lazy and she could tell. You can’t be a machine all the time and come 6:45pm she told me to go home and get a good night’s sleep and come in feeling brighter tomorrow. She said, relax it’s the weekend. At least she realises that I am working hard.

Week 2: Day 3

Busy day and was glad to spend the majority of it out and about. Probably one of the most enjoyable days I have had since starting work. I went along with workmate, Laurel, to the Arcadia Press Day. We originally got lost and went to Somerset House on Embankment, but there was a mix up as that’s where the Estethica function is tomorrow that I will also be attending.

Arcadia are the company who own Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Burton, Topman, Evans, Wallis and Dorothy Perkins. It was held at Victoria House in Holbourn and it was very busy and extremely packed with all the important people from the magazines and newspapers and bloggers etc. It was the most showy event Ive been to so far too. A DJ was playing in on of the halls/ rooms across from a bar that was set up offering soft drinks and champagne. Waiter were walking around offering mini plates of mini dishes (bangers and mash, risotto, roast lamb with roast potatoes) and they were walking round shoving champagne glasses into people’s hands – even if they already had one. The collections were amazing and it was so exciting to be seeing what will be out in the shops this coming season. What’s all the more impressive is that it’s fashion that will have the largest impact on the high street so to be given a heads up with what even I will be wearing was brilliant. I spent most of the afternoon crooning over clothes with Laurel and taking photos on my iphone to create a ‘shopping list’ for next season! Messing around aside, we spent a lot of time talking to the PR officers about the collections and asking them about new ventures some of the chains will be doing.

Press days are all very similar but it makes it all a bit more exciting when the owner of a huge multi-billion pound businness is walking around the clothes rails with you inspecting his stock. Yes, Sir Philip Green was there too, as ever showing a caring thought for his stock. I played with the idea of going to talk to him and introducing him to Sketchbook Magazine, but we decided it wouldn’t be appropriate as he was surrounded by women trying to ‘suck’ up. But he looked at the same rail of clothes at the same time I did. He also looked me up and down, as if to check out my outfit (to my horror), but he looked up at my face and smiled. What a hero.

Laurel and I took it upon ourselves to continue the good afternoon by slacking a bit more and going for lunch at a pancake house. It’s so nice to make some good friends at work who I can hang out with. Everyones from different places but we’re all in the same boat.

Late had to rush over to Shoreditch to attend another press day, while Laurel went back to the shop to help out. Bit of a mission but finally got me using buses – which are so much easier and cheaper! It really wasn’t worth going because the fashion at Tea & Cake PR is all about board sports and more sporty fashion – not really suitable for Sketchbook. I headed back to the office, exhausted and my feet bleeding – hours of walking in heels is very dangerous and painful. I was given a whole load of work to finish for tomorrow morning too, as I will be going to Dia after Estethica. 

W2 Day2

Dia office today. We have moved into another room in Rasha’s appartment. It’s a much nicer space to work in as everyone has a lot more space to work and it’s a lot brighter, with lots of big windows, so we got a lot of sun today.

I pretty much did all of the editing for Dia Magazine, as the new issue is being published (online) tomorrow. I was quite shocked by the amount of typos made by all the journalists and bloggers who contirbute to the magazine – I guess I’ve realised subbing is one of my strongest points. I had to edit a lot of photos and crop some to create thumbnails for the stories on the webpage. It was mainly simple things like formatting that I wasd asked to do, but this took such a long time as there was just so much of it to do and as soon as I finished one piece, Wafa asked me to do another. I have a feeling that I was doing the majority of her work – but I guess that’s just part and parcel of being an intern.

The morning flew by, but the afternoon seemed to be endless – I just had so much work. I contacted the author Wafa wants to interview and she replied with some very nice emails. We arranged for her to come into the Pop Up Shop on Friday at 3pm. She seemed more interested in the shop and Sketchbook than Dia (despite her being an author on Middle Eastern culture (though she is caucasian). I emailed a n Arabic-American architect on a design he’s created and recently shown at the Milan Design Week. He lives in New York, s it will have to be an email interview.

I also uploaded my second story onto WordPress (the server Dia uses for its blog and magazine) and both pieces I wrote (one on falafels!! And the other on a new tea brand launching in Beirut). The falafel one, I believe, is going in the magazine but I think the tea one is going in the blog.

I didn’t leave work until 6:45pm and work throughout the day without a break – that’s the hardest thing to deal with. By about 3pm I was ready to give up with work. I think I would be a lot more productive if I had an offical one hour lunch break. Some days are different though, and most people seem to be working as they eat. It’s just so crazy and something I’ll have to be ready for when I start work professionally.

Still haven’t been able to start my research, but I am starting to notice that this diary/ blog is keeping track of a lot of relevant information to do with how the magazine manages itself. It’s curious how seemed to have gotten involved with two publications over the placement. I intend to make a mention of my intentions to Wafa tomorrow as I feel our relationship is growing more casual and relaxed. She trusts me with a lot of work and values what I do which is a great feeling. Tomorrow I’m going to the Tea and Cake PR press day with workmate, Laurel. That should be fun. Also Thursday will be attending the British Fashion Council Estethica press day, both held at Somerset house (really excited) but I am going by myself to Estethica which isn’t so great because I always find myself so lonely and less confident when I’m plunged into the fashion insider circles without someone to introduce me. It’s notoriously hard to break those (especially as novice).