Sara Eileen Hames and a group of New York-based creatives challenged themselves to put together a publication from start to finish in a single day
At the first editorial meeting of twenty-four magazine, I turned to the staff of 10 and asked: "Do any of you know what this magazine is going to be about?" All of them shook their heads. "How many of you have worked in magazines before?" Four hands went up, including my own, and there was a round of nervous laughter. One day later, we published our first issue.
The idea to create twenty-four began selfishly: I wanted to make a magazine. For me, print magazines are a fascinating medium, combining content, design, a crafted physical object and the opportunity to curate an ongoing conversation around a single idea. Twenty-four is simultaneously a print magazine, an online experience and a creative challenge. The goal is simple: a small team of creative professionals conceptualise, design, write and photograph a print magazine in 24 hours and document everything via Flickr, Tumblr, YouTube, Storify and Kickstarter, making the process part of the product. Time-restricted projects have been done for comics, art shows, albums and other magazines before; it seems we increasingly invest in experiences over products and we want more transparency from the artists we love. This is why twenty-four was designed with documentation in mind; revealing our process live meant that we were not only producing a magazine for print but also creating a sort of online improv show.
Very few of the staff knew one another before the magazine started, and watching these relative strangers choose to trust one another under such intense circumstances was the most remarkable part of the entire process.
During issue one, we learned a great deal very quickly. For example, a talented production person can take page count from 40 to 60 in under three hours. A great writer is just as great at 3am as at 3pm. An excellent copy editor is indispensable. And the magazine is about people: the people involved and their experiences as creative professionals. Watching them attempt to meet a somewhat ridiculous deadline taps into our sense of sympathy, but it's what they have to say that gets us invested.
On the other hand, always have the excellent copy editor check the cover text, lest you release a digital copy of your magazine that misspells "Hemingway". Assign a photo editor, lest you end up tossing a coin to decide on the cover image for a story. Order meals in advance, lest you end up realising that you are short of one egg sandwich and it is your duty, as editor-in-chief, to go without.
And, most important, inject more order into the creative chaos. There were many moments when I thought we might be in over our heads, but the scariest by far was half an hour before deadline when Andrew, the writer, pulled me aside and said quietly: "We're not going to make it."
"I know," I replied. "I don't know what to do."
His answer surprised me. "It's fine. We just get it done. No one is going to care."
As the minutes ticked past, I expected to be flooded with angry messages from subscribers demanding their magazines but that didn't happen. As it turned out, no one cared about the difference between 24 hours and 26. Most people had been following along for the whole day and they cared more about us and what we were making than they did about the rules.
One of my primary goals as we plan for issue two has been creating a stricter editorial schedule, but even now no one asks if we made our deadline. The question I am asked most frequently, when I explain how the magazine works, is: "Did you sleep?"
This surprised me the first time, but now I think people ask it so often because they sympathise with the experience of fighting the clock. Perhaps they are remembering deadlines past, when they saw the sun rise over a desk or a workbench, putting the finishing touches on some project that kept them up all night.