It's Out I

After being so well received by the entire country, we were busting our brains trying to think of how to top Maximum Exposure. This third issue with Borgy on the cover was the issue that created a spot for ICON in this cutthroat, dog-eat-dog, snooty, and high-mortality industry of publishing. Although the success was uplifting, it was also creating an enormous amount of pressure to the staff. We knew it was going to be tough to top the issue, but I didn’t think it was going to be that tough. Here’s why…

First, our art director and layout artist had to leave the publication for a good reason—a better job! Initially, I felt bad because he was such an asset to the magazine. Later on, however, I realized he had already nailed the look of the magazine and all it really needed was continuous fine-tuning and a natural progression. After weeks and weeks of searching, I found ‘the one’ in Dave Calderon. Dave is one of three straight people in the magazine. Although some may view a straight guy art directing a gay magazine as odd, he actually fits into the team seamlessly. More importantly, he and our Creative Director are one the same page.

Second, this issue of power was not only difficult to make because it involved so many personalities, but it also required careful attention and perfection (more than the previous issues). The shoots were tension filled, long and meticulous, and painstaking. It involved many interviews, several changes in line-up, long hours of transcribing, lots of cutting, editing, proofreading, and color correction.

The schedule was horrendous. We were waiting for cover boy who was on holiday for weeks and weeks. We did set a shoot date, but it took another week of endless phone calls and numerous texts messages until he finally reconfirmed the night before the shoot. One can only figure how praning I had become during production. While we were having schedule problems, we were also having concept problems. Thank goodness for talent though because the shoots were amazing.

Lastly, we had printing problems. Turns out the body text wasn’t in the right format. It’s probably too technical to explain so I’ll leave out the details. But at the end of the day, we managed to produce an OUTSTANDING issue—The Issue of Power.