Life at the extreme - and Spain!

As the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-9 drew to an exciting close in St Petersburg earlier this year Cradducks were busy finalising the wrap-up issue of Life at The Extreme, the gorgeous, glossy race magazine which says as much about the way we like to design and produce our publications as it does about the most exciting professional yacht race ever. But the Race didn't stop there and nor did our workload! Since the end of the last Race, the team at the Volvo Ocean Race office has kept us extremely busy producing, amongst others, issue 33 of the magazine, the cover for the souvenir book Spanish Castle to White Knight, the 2010 desk calendar and two books to promote sponsorship and marketing opoortunities for the next race in 2011-12.

Produced as a pair, Race in Numbers does what it says on the cover - it gives detailed statistics about the 2008-09 race, from media coverage and audience profiles to staggering facts like the first four boats in Leg 3 arriving in Singapore within twenty minutes of each other - after 36 days at sea! The book extends to 96 pages and as well as masses of information it also contains some fantastic imagery, only surpassed by its companion Case Book, an A4 72pp perfect bound document which tells you everything you ever need to know about the race, the business opportunities and what it is really like to be involved in a professional, global sporting event of this stature. It is like a huge scrapbook of information - not only in English but in Italian, French and Spanish as well. As Knut Frostad, Volvo Ocean Race's CEO says, 'it provides an insight into how sponsors can use the Race to meet their brand and marketing objectives'.

At the end of November, Volvo Ocean Race shut its door on their Race Office in Whiteley, HQ to the Race for ten years, to move the whole operation to Alicante in Spain. The nature of the Race has changed dramatically since it first started as The Whitbread all those years ago, and the move to Spain is a natural part of this evolutionary process. It also means that Cradducks have their first Spanish client and will be making good use of Skype over the next few months!

More on mags...

Magazines have been our lifeblood for many years – we cut our teeth in the late 70s on 3M Publication’s Where Magazine, a fortnightly ‘what’s on’ distributed through London’s top hotels and went on to produce Binsted Publications’ many bottling and packaging trade mags, for a whopping 17 years. We put pages together in French, Spanish and German as well as English and for a huge variety of titles and sectors – everything from TV-related consumer magazines like Wizadora and Countdown to defence titles such as Defence Africa and Defence Systems Modernisation. The most bizarre title must go to Addiction Councelling Worldwide and the least inspiring probably a members’ magazine for The Institute of Environmental Health Officers Association, although the article on salmonella poisoning in Chinese sausages in Soho does stand out as a high spot.

Since the early 90s, we have produced glossies for what was then The Whitbread Round the World Race (and is now the Volvo Ocean Race) – from the relatively home grown Race News, through several changes of title and direction (including four souvenir race programmes) to today’s sophisticated and Volvo-branded lifestyle-orientated Life at the Extreme. Staying with the nautical theme, for over eight years we produced the RYA’s 76pp journal, RYA Magazine, which goes out to their 90,000-strong membership every quarter.

Another specialist magazine area for us has been in-house journals: David Cradduck first worked on BP Shield, BP’s in-house staff mag and Gorseinon News, a 3M staff newspaper back in the 70s and over the next three decades there followed a series of titles such as Interchange (HFC Bank), Touchbase (Homebase), Talkback (NIG Brokers), Hotline (Direct Line), News at Six (Rio Tinto) and mine (Rio Tinto).

The design and production of publications is an area we know a lot about and have a huge amount of experience in – if you are struggling to get your book, journal, magazine or newsletter produced on time and looking good, why not give us a call?