SQ Origins (with name)

SQ Origins

The long-awaited interview with the creators of SQ magazine!

In this interview, Ashling Larkin talks with Lewis Scrafton and Corey Pellatt, the creators of SQ, about how they came up with their magazine and what advice they'd give to anyone aspiring to develop a student magazine of their own!

So what inspired you to create the magazine?

L: First off it was... I think it was towards the end of the first year, we kind of decided we wanted to go to university but we didn't know where.  The idea was that SQ was just gonna be a monthly or weekly newsletter to be run by us, helped out by students. Since then it's kind of developed. We went through our second year of college and it became a magazine and... now we're here!

C: The idea was to boost our uni applications, that's what the original concept was, and it just kind of grew into what it is today.

And how do you know each other?

C:  Secondary school really, and then college kind of pulled us together a little more.

Do you work with a lot of other people on the magazine?

L: Yeah, we have a guy who does the illustration on the front covers. He's at university at the moment, he's done the last three covers now and he's really good, he brings some of the stuff that makes us different to other magazines and he does that for free.  We're on a tight budget so we don't pay our contributors but we have sources at colleges at and students willing to contribute to get their name out. There's... around about fifteen I would say.

C: Yeah, we handle pretty much everything organization-wise; daily e-mails, daily tweets, blogs. We run the website and we also sort out contributions from willing students who are talented and want to get their name out there.

How was it initially founded, because of your tight budget?

L: It was founded on a budget of nothing, basically. We went straight out to local businesses who expressed an interest in what we were doing and at the time there was a couple of other magazines about so it was quite a competitive environment at that point in time, so we had to find our niche, and from there it grew.

C: We've never really lost any money out of it but we've never really made great gains either. We've broken in pretty much every time which is what we always aim to do. Everything is pretty much self-financed through advertising, so no start-up!

Do you enjoy working on it?

L: Definitely, I mean it takes up a lot of our time... we have to fit it in between work and we're on gap years at the moment so we can put in more time to it, it's just, you know, work getting in the way. So yeah, we definitely do enjoy it, writing and getting feedback and integrating with all sorts of people.

C: Yeah, it gives us a lot of opportunities to meet new people and do little things, like this for example. Get a hold of interviews, free passes and stuff and go to cool little events locally, meet quite a lot of people... there are perks to the job!

And how do you come about finding interesting content?

C: To be honest, a lot of it is what we just think is quite cool. A lot of it is based around our own perceptions and being young people ourselves, I think we're far more on the pulse of what's cool in this culture than a 40-year-old guy in a suit running some other magazine; I think that gives us a bit of an advantage to be fair! We always keep our eyes glued on blogs, on new sites, so we always know what's about to blow and we can try to capitalize on that.

L: It's just knowing where to look! People bash Eastbourne but it's not too bad. Before doing the magazine I thought, "I'm stuck in this place, so I have to go to university in London or something", but what I've found for the magazine is that if you look in the right places there is stuff there. We're going to uni in Brighton which is just round the corner so it means we can stay here, which is what we want to do, 'cause it's not too bad.

Do you expect the magazine to become bigger?

L: Hopefully, yeah - with the right initiative and building the right team I guess, then just keeping it going for as long as possible and developing it. In the last 18 months it's grown from what it was before with like no fans on facebook or whatever...

C: Near 700 now if you can see the counter!

L: Yeah, and we just recently had an article published last night which hit 45 comments! So there's definitely progression.

What's the process of making the magazine? Do you just...  send it to the printers?

L: It's a long, drawn-out process 'cause it's the two of us, so normally I'm sitting there designing and he sends over the words and the content.

C: It's all done online really - we'll be on facebook, chatting and exchanging ideas... Lewis takes care of the production side so that's all the artwork and design and I take care of the content.

L: We have editorial meetings like this where we just go add stuff like what we're gonna cover, so in this case it's that Brighton's got this new stadium coming up in September and then obviously the interviews – they're hard to get! We'll be pushing for ages. Sometimes we go four weeks without having a single front cover name...

C: That [the latest issue] was only decided like a week ago, we didn't have anything a week ago!

If you could give like any piece of advice for someone who wants to start up their own magazine in a different area or so, what would you say?

C: The main thing is just have ambition. Have confidence in what you do! People often say the best time to try out something is when you're young 'cause you've got the time to make mistakes and learn from it and improve from it.

L: Cliché isn't it?

C: If you do this in 20 years time, you mess up once and you'll not get a chance to re-do it. Find the right people to work with. That's probably the most important thing as well, know what you're good at and stick to that and don't be afraid to include other people in things that are going well. Just be an open book!