It takes Allsorts…

Project: Allsorts Magazine
Published Monthly

Funny how thing’s work out isn’t it? One moment your sitting in your office calmly going about your business, the next your talking to a rather breathless marketing guru explaining that (in the grand tradition of marketing gurus) she’s just seen an amazing opportunity and wants me to be part of it. Within days I’m in front of a publisher who is enthusiastically outlining a brand new concept in community publishing that literally (oh, nice pun) blows me away and within days I’ve secured an ongoing contract to write the entire content for a monthly magazine.

The marketing guru in question is Dee Blick, bestselling author and opportunity spotter. The publisher is Mantra Magazines headed up by Matthew Arnold and Nikki Relffe-Arnold and the magazine is Allsorts, a quirky, fresh and highly amusing magazine soap opera featuring the wild antics of the Allsorts family.

The brief for the project was simple; we need to create a family of engaging and humorous characters designed to appeal to all interests and ages. These characters would represent areas within the magazine and we would develop their stories around advertiser messages and key events throughout the year. Dee had spotted the potential for me to get involved off the back of my successful one man show “Not What We Expected” where I devised, wrote and played 10 different characters in a series of high octane monologues.

This new magazine heralds a new approach for community publications which has traditionally centres its content on events and articles of a local nature. Matthew and Nikki wanted to create something fresh and new, “with all the challenges of modern life we wanted to create something to put a smile on people’s faces” she explains, “the whole idea is for people to really look forward to receiving the magazine and get into the hilarious antics of the family”.

At the time of writing the magazine had just hit the streets and the reaction so far has been fantastic.

To read the first issue click here
To check out Allsorts online go to the website or their Facebook page.

Feedback

“Tim is an absolute joy to work with as a creative writer. From the moment we met with Tim to scope the “Allsorts” magazine project he was hugely enthusiastic, and helped us enormously in coming up with the final ideas to create the Allsorts Family. When the first character profiles and articles started to arrive for our approval, we couldn’t have been happier – everything we had discussed with Tim, down to the minor details was encompassed in each of the characters. Thank you Tim and here’s to a long and happy relationship of Allsorts!”
Nikki Relffe-Arnold – Director