Covergirl or Not
why i think girls on the cover are a good idea
Last issue we put a girl on the cover. I think it got a good response, especially from the target marget of young males. They stop to look at the mag and look over each other’s shoulders, so that’s OK with me. I’ve been told that it’s sexist but I don’t really think there was ever that intent. I’m just trying to make things less boring, and it should move magazines. Every major movie involves some female lead, and a great deal of good artwork does as well. As long is it gets that first look and then hopefully a read of the content I’m happy to put a pleasant face on the cover. There is however, some opposition. Here’s a convo I had with Mahangu,
Mahangu: ur up early
Indi: get up early all the time now
here’s a cover:
Mahangu: please no half nude
:)
Indi: background: the worst government office you can think of, with the desks piled with papers
front: girl in sari (white pref) doing the Tom Cruise minority report thing
Mahangu: neato
why not a boy
lets do boy/girl issues
else indi we’re gonna let the shit hit the fan man
Indi: could also be a boy, but all the geeks i talked to at ms and everywhere want a girl
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/minority_report/gallery.php?page=11&size=hires&nopop=1
Mahangu: or both
ive watched the movie, seems a neat idea
Indi: both can’t, think we need to stick to girl, shit will really hit the fan if we use a boy
Mahangu: but it’s gonna be a tough photoshop
im sure you can do it though
Indi: nah, why?
i just need to find a horrible govt office and photo it, know any?
Mahangu: no dude, what im saying is, we cant get the reputation of having a cover girl
mmm we can just take one
walk over to sethsiripaya
:)
next door neda?
Indi: yeah, can take, need to find
ran a small poll online and scourge (only respondent) wanted girl. Everyone at MS thing did
Mahangu: dude im talking about non geeks
Indi: dude, there are were like 15,000 guys there watching some salsa number at the end of the night
Mahangu: normal people who have female contact
Indi: still like girls, are you crazy?
what’s on the cover of the Mirror Magazine?
Mahangu: dude
you miss the point
the mirror is fecking pop culture
this is IT
no mate, cmon not next issue
fark, we’re selling this for the wrong reasons then
we can’t play to the gallery
Indi: then play to high art, that’s girls as well
feck it, tell me where to find a govt office
thinking bambla
Mahangu: dude, seriously man
we cant do a women every issue
we need to have guy/girl
Indi: ok, we’ll do men or personalities for some
Mahangu: or both in the least
Indi: actually, we’ll do polling once we launch a site
Mahangu: ok fine
the thing is, im ok with a woman at times
if it doesnt look like VOGUE
or COSMO
as long as she keeps her clothes on
Indi: you’re such a weirdo
Mahangu: but i think we should put some male figures too
Mahangu: it brings the mag standard down mate
we dont need a chick to sell our mag
Indi: fucking Homian
oyi! Did mahangu just call me non-female-contact-GEEK? yeah! i’ll let it pass.
Who you trying to sell to? GUYS and some computer lovin’ girls
What do they like? Computer guys, regardless of female contact, love pictures of girls. Trust me on this. Computer lovin’ girls, love hot girls too.
People reading this mag, always see boys (males) etc. What they dont see is hot girls and computers in the same frame. Get ma drift?
Anyways, a really messy govt, office would be the etf office. There are piles and piles forms that need to be cleared out, desks that have bottles of VAT 69 filled with water… OR go to courts, you’ll love it there. but you can’t take pictures, might have to throw some money around…
Your so called ‘high art’ portrayes the male figure as much as the female it figure. It was more an exploration of the human form than something plastic like what you’re doing. You are not exploring the female form for the advancement of knowledge (releted to art, expression, creative thought or otherwise). You’re just pimping a woman on your front page to sell a magazine to people with permanent hard-ons. Such illusions of grandure are pathetic.
High art is art for art’s sake. Not to sell a magazine. DUH!
You’re not a’ high art’ist, more like a porn flick director.
Scourge,
Thoppiya hari nang daganna. :P What I actually meant where geeks in general. :)
In a way I guess you really couldn’t do better because you know nothing about the media, or the values and principles under which the media operates.
You’re just an advertising and marketing guy and you’re doing you’re job, which is trying to sell a magazine. But you have no idea about the whole business of operating a magazine from the ‘media’ point of view. You do not know your responsibilities and your duties…but then, they didn’t teach you that in Capitalist U did they?
Hey Indi, next time you want a semi clad woman on the cover, use your sister and see what it feels like having the whole world ogle her…
i was actually thinking, quite seriously, of using your sister.
I’m not exactly clear how to rebut your personal attacks as they don’t have any real content. I’ve never worked in advertising or marketing guy. I haven’t libeled or slandered anyone, so can’t say that I’ve violated my duties as a journalist. Finally, I don’t see anything wrong with portraying the female form. You being a prudish and surly doesn’t necessarily make me a hack.
Your ‘duties as a journalist’? You consider yourself a journalist now? Please, gimmie a break. Just because you put together an IT magazine that does not make you a journalist. The sad fact is that many of the people in this country who consider themselves journalists are as clueless as you about the profession. So going by the norm I guess you could call yourself a Sri Lankan journalist, but a journalist in the objective sense? Don’t make me laugh.
You obviously don’t see anything wrong with using the hacked image of the semi-clad female form to sell something that has nothing to do with the female form or the female per se. It just goes to show your lack of creativity.
You may believe yourself to be a ‘high-art’ist but as long as you use hacked ideas you’re just a big fat hack. No different from the guys who use semi-clad women to sell tyres and cars.
I am not prudish, but I have problems with hacks like you trivialising a woman’s body simply because they’re unable to come up with a better idea to sell their product. Unlike may hardliners I don’t think using the female form to sell something related to the female form and the female is unacceptable. But you’re trying to sell an IT mag, not perfume or makeup. Remember that your mother and your sisters are also women. Would you like to pictures of them semi-clad hanging all over town? Considering the depths to which I’ve seen you sink, I wouldn’t actually be surprised if you put one of your sisters half naked picture up on the next cover.
I for one know that my sister would never agree to such a hack, uncreative non-idea.
Since your head seems to way up your capitalist ass, pull a video camera from somewhere there, shoot a family porn flick, put it online, make a lot of money, shut up and retire. No more running a stupid magazine and no more morquendi giving you a hard time.
You libelled and slandered me once upon a time you dirty boy. But I’ll let that pass because I got a table and Morq didn’t. Hee hee.
I’ve Been following your mag thing and I think a girl on the cover is a good idea. I’m not exactly a computer geek, but I think it’s a novel idea to have on an IT mag.
As for a messy govt. office try the divisional secretariate office just opposite Visakha College. Horrible place! You might have to take some flash bulbs to light up the place!
And please take some time to read what I’m saying instead of just blindly lashing back like you normally do… Please? That would save us both a lot of time :)
i think there is nothing fundamentally wrong with having a girl on cover.
though have to agree with your colleague mahangu that overdoing it will cheapen the mag.
I think it’s just that so many commercials and advertizers in SL just use skimpily dressed girls to market their products even if it’s not related to their product, which gets annoying after a while. that is, they don’t seem to use much creativity.
there’s nothing at all wrong about putting up skimpily dressed girls, hell I am all for it! and I personally think it was just the eye catcher you needed to kick off your first issue… but I wouldn’t want to see you make a habit of it, not for any other reason except that it becomes too predictable and lame after a while.
there are after all geeky girls (like yours truly) out there who wouldn’t mind seeing a sexy male geek celeb on the cover!
with the whole skimpily dressed girl thing, you are operating on the assumption that only males buy your mag. to quote scourge (who btw comes across as a whiney little bitch so i try very hard to ignore him – you should too) – “Computer lovin’ girls love hot girls too” no, not all of them do. and even with the ones who don’t mind a hot girl on the cover, we still prefer hot guys.
so indi, don’t we girls get any eye candy? are you going to make me pout? ;) if the cover didn’t have the acronym “IT” on it, I would not buy a mag with skimpily dressed girls on it. well okay I might, but that’s because I have questionable tendencies. I have doubts about most others though.
maybe you need to put up geeky girls on the cover? you know, a cute thing in glasses on linux. there’s nothing a geek loves more than a geeky girl. I am guessing here. AND “geeky girl”-dom needs to be promoted, don’t you think?
i would love to feature geeky girls and guys, problem is the community is still growing. Actually have an idea for the guys that produced Taprobane (Sri Lankan Linux), and some of the Microsoft MVPs might clean up nicely.
That’s a brilliant idea, especially since “Taprobane” has been getting attention. You should definitely consider that.
How about a half-and-half. For example the LHS half would be sripala and the RHS half would be srilatha. If nothing else it’ll keep your photoshops skills occupied
I think it’s a good piece of marketing. It adds a little bit of spice to what is otherwise not traditionally a sexy subject (well to me at least). I wouldn’t have bought the mag just bc of the cover bc i’m not an IT person, but as Indi said it’ll make ppl look twice. As long as the content is solid and can stand on its own feet it’ll make ppl buy it over and over regardless of the cover. But for a first issue, good idea, but probably best not to repeat continually bc it’ll give the impression that the content isn’t good in its right.
Also, Morquendi said that it wouldn’t have been too nice had it been your own sister on the cover, well thing is whoever that girl is, it was her choice to be on the cover, and who are we to question her judgement? If she doesn’t feel that it pinches her dignity or whatever, I don’t see why there should be any hullaballoo.
No need to get the panties in a knot guys.Sri Lankan males have so many ways to find nude/semi-nude pictures .They do not need to buy an IT magazine for that.Just go to kottu stats page and look up the frequent quaries that lands on kottu.
First cover is a good idea to get the attention in the newsstand.It would be OK in the begining.After couple of times ,if the content is good enough ,you can put even some code in the front cover!
The people who are saying it is not creative and oldest trick is bringing out the oldest argument against it.The sister /mom argument.Morquendi, why don’t you try something new and creative for a change?
I like the government office idea .Scourge is right about courts.They have the greatest offices!I don’t think they would allow cameras though.Try any office close to your place.
I think everyone didn’t get me right. What I’m saying is that continually putting semi-clothed women on the cover will make the magazine look cheap, which it isn’t. We both spend a lot of our waking hours on this thing, and I personally don’t want it to be not picked up by an intelligent person just b/c he/she sees a bikini on the cover. Get my drift?
I don’t know about you guys, but when I see a half naked female on a magazine cover I immediately devalue it – Oh it’s another GQ. I don’t want that to happen to something that has so much potential.
Also, other tech mags like Wired do put people on the cover, just not in this way. The issue here isn’t the girl on the cover. It’s the way we portray her. Here we’re not selling her intellect or geek, we’re selling her body. Which, despite what anyone says, is stupid for an IT magazine.
+1 to that.
Reminds me Ganganath Dissanayake strategies at Rupavahini, quite a while ago…
[...] You’re just an advertising and marketing guy and you’re doing you’re job, which is trying to sell a magazine. But you have no idea about the whole business of operating a magazine from the ‘media’ point of view. You do not know your responsibilities and your duties…but then, they didn’t teach you that in Capitalist U did they? (Covergirl) [...]
Is there something about Sri Lanka that no matter what ANYBODY does SOMEONE has to criticize them!? I’m curious…or has something been done at some point where everyone said: “Congratulations! Good job!”? Maybe marriages? No…not even.
Let me start by addressing the mother/sister argument very simply: If your mother or sister CHOOSES to be a model, then it’s her decision to be on whatever cover she wants however she’s dressed. Not anyone else’s. I’m pretty sure these models know what they’re getting into beforehand. “Half naked”?? Come on. We’ve all seen much more skin at the Blue in SL. THAT I might sometimes qualify as half naked!
I never saw the problem with having a female on the cover. I will agree with Mahangu however, that this magazine is NOT Cosmo or GQ and if you always have females people might get the wrong idea. Then you also have to ask: “Do I want to be like all the other standard IT magazines?”. I would change up the pictures, but I do NOT see a problem with having girls like this every once in a while. If your content is good, will people stop buying your mag because of a female on the cover? I doubt it.
I guess such a big deal has been made of this because it is in Sri Lanka. I’d be surprised if something like this created waves here (in Canada). Indi, if the mag sells, good job. Since this is a IT mag, have you set up a website for it? That would be the ideal place to collect demographic and feedback data.
Obviously, that’s why it’s called Canada, and this is called Sri Lanka, for better or for worse.
1truecoolguy :
No website yet. We’re sort of up to our necks in work (seeing that the entire Editorial staff is just US), and our objectives are basically to create a high quality magazine, a high quality CD to ship with it and THEN a high quality website. We don’t want to start off too many things and do a crummy job on them. :) Rest assured though, a website is definitely on the cards.
Mahangu – Great. I would have been surprised if you 2 hadn’t thought of that! ;) It’s a good idea not to spread yourselves too thing (especially in the initial stages). What’s going to be on the CD? Free open-source software? Are you hoping to have a CD every month? If yes, will the price of the mag go up?
Well the CD will contain stuff relevant to each issue, but yeah, due to licenses will most likely contain mostly FOSS. The price of the magazine will remain the same.
Kudos on the mag, I think its bright ideas like this that SL really needs. With the whole covergirl issue, sex sells and that cover was tastefully done and had some symbolism to it. Look at car mod mags, though girls have very little to do with modifying imports. Get over yourselves with the excessive conservatism, the Victorians may have colonised us a 100 years ago but there’s no reason to keep their stuffy attitudes on sexuality under the guise of it being our ‘culture.’
Also bringing sisters and mothers into arguments is just not cool…
Hi, I visit your site quite often but have never posted a comment. Thought I might as well now…
Good job on the magazine. Got my hands on a copy and it’s good stuff.
Just to let you know, my boss – who is in the least bit interested in IT – bought a copy of the magazine because of the pretty girl on the cover! And now he plans on buying all future copies because he found the Photoshop article very interesting. I guess using a cover girl to push sales on the first issue was a good idea. On the other hand, my dad had seen the ad for the magazine in the papers but hadn’t quite noticed what the magazine was about; all he had noticed was the girl on the cover! Apparently she was too distracting… They both commented on how beautifully the photograph was taken.
About using a cover girl on every issue, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. It’ll just be too predictable. There are so many different subjects that can be used on a cover so why stick to only one of them? Like someone suggested, why not a (hot) geeky guy?!
Anyways, good luck on the next issue!
HI Marquendi,
I ve been following your discussion on and off.
I find you very interesting and surely very stimulating, of course there are pros and cons, but thank you for your insightful, open comments.But please work on how you articulate them.
Coming back to the reason why I wrote is that, one of my favourite musicians wrote to this sight after you all commented about his music. But then his comments were never replied nor accepted, there was total silence. I found his comments were very genuine and wise! But then for something when I browse the yahoo search on the SL film which won the Cannes, I found a disgusting, very low (have no words to discribe) way of replying to this musician for his comments to this sights discussion on SL music and Brass Monkey Band Show. Please click the address below and see what Indi.ca is capable off!
forget about his artistic mind or what ever.
I feel sorry for this kid!
indi.ca ” Just Fucking With You
… talk about social isues and racism. Nadeeka Guruge: to everybody who posted comments on me and my music.. Good TO …www.indi.ca/2003/09/just-fucking-with-you – 35k – Cached – More from this site – Save – Block
you don’t make any sense, i thought you were a spambot for a while. Who are you mad at?
please, just click on the short i posted in my comment and see for your self , how, if not you, some one is replying for the comments made in your web using your web name!
I find it truely disgusting, is it s a problem of genes? or generation?
eh?
Adoh, this post is hilarious. I think this must have been before I started reading the blogs. I certainly think you should have a covergirl every issue, and I think it’s a brilliant idea as well, considering your target market. The consumer is king. Define your target market and then ask them what they want. Simple.
Where’s the weed man?
You said ganja?
We don’t need no stank ass half naked hos man.
We gots the internets for that shit.
Maybe you can run a little test for me, put that pic from tomshardware about how they got a pentium bumblewood to do 2 gazillion ghz after cooling it with liquid nitrogen on the cover and see if sales go up cos of that.
As for chicks on the cover, fuck that, she gets paid for what she does, and the chap paying for the mag gets what he pays for. You can worry about being a sell out once your bank balance looks healthier.