It's exactly what every custom publisher doesn't want to hear: We're stopping the magazine.
It makes our collective little hearts drop. Last April, it happened to us.
Journey has been part of EFCA Today since 1997, when we took over issue planning, editorial services, art direction and design, as well as ad sales. Working from the ground up, we shaped a magazine that has won numerous awards for design and writing. EFCA Today has always been about unifying church leaders by telling the denominational stories and generating conversation about topics pertinent to faith and life.
EFCA leadership gradually came to believe that a digital version of the magazine would be read more than a print version. But they weren't sure what that should look like.
We'd expected something like this would eventually happen to one of our magazine clients, so we'd been spending a lot of time studying trends, experimenting (hello, Story Matters?) and researching the various directions that publishing could take. So we were ready. Sort of.
With the decision that summer 2010 would be the last printed issue of EFCA Today, we had little time to waste in planning next steps. We expected a bit of a learning curve for our readers too. After all, for decades they'd held the print magazine in their hands. We needed to make it crystal clear that the new magazine would be delivered differently but still feature the same content.
EFCA Today Summer 2010, the last printed issue.
So while we moved the majority of the storytelling online, we also recommended that the EFCA keep a small print component, to help transition readers and whet their appetites for more. We picked a heavier stock, a square shape and an eight-page booklet format to announce quarterly web features and remind readers to go to the new website.
The print component announcing new web features
Online, we created custom art-directed features and made a place for the familiar departments that we kept fresh with new content every week. The medium was now quite different, but the heart of the organization storytelling that was so vital to pastors and lay leaders remained exactly the same.
In the past, the magazine was simply delivered in bundles to churches. There was no way to know how people were reading, if they were reading and what they were reading. But now, thanks to digital analytics, we can gauge how readers are engaging content and then make editorial and design decisions based on that.
While we were mixing things up, we also revamped a familiar communication tool—the weekly update to all EFCA leadership: changing the long, scrolling email to one that not only promotes the online magazine stories but is also backed by a clear vision statement, no more being the catch-all for everything.
Change, it's true, is never easy. But sometimes it provides opportunities to try new things, learn new tools and communicate in new ways. For us and the EFCA, that means a new way to look at a magazine. We've been at it less than a year, but so far, we're all pretty pleased with the result.
