Eclipse (magazine)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eclipse is the official Middle School magazine of Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, which is among the highest achieving public schools in the UK. Founded in 1997 by Zain Naz and Mr. David Green (current Head of Lower School), Eclipse is now an A4 colour magazine which is published by Tangerine of Kings Langley.
[edit] Early history
Eclipse is pre-dated by the Lower School magazine, Third Dimension, by several years, and was the idea of Zain Naz, a former student at the school. Along with David Green, Zain Naz was able to found a magazine for the Middle School (Years 9-11). In a bid to differentiate Eclipse from Third Dimension, the former took the format of a stapled bunch of A4 sheets, folded in half with a coloured front page. Though initially thought of by some as being a little clumsy, this novel format soon won many supporters. Including a mix of essays, prose, verse and factual articles, Eclipse soon attracted a wide ranging audience.
[edit] Eclipse Grows Up
After a number of minor alterations to the style and front cover design, Eclipse had become accepted as the Middle School magazine. With its emblem of multiple silhouettes of heads on top of one another; folded layout; use of Comic Sans; and a blend of articles, the magazine was selling fairly strongly and was on the whole a popular addition to the school's journalism output.
Succeeding Zain Naz as editor was Toby Miller (now reading Engineering at Oxford University), who continued to develop the style, but focused mainly on the articles. The next editor was Jack Fejer, who was equally pleased with the format of the magazine. However, as Jack Fejer entered the Upper School, the reigns were once more passed over, but now to a team of two editiors with similar plans for the magazine.
As joint editors, year 10 pupils Sachin Patel and Laughlan Steer took control of the magazine's formatting. Both had previously worked on the Third Dimension publication. Under the continued leadership of David Green, the two new editors began the process of redesigning the publication. Their ambition was to revolutionise the magazine; transforming it from a photocopied publication to something in full colour and recognisably a "magazine", printed on A3 paper folded once to form a conventional booklet. Inspired by modernist graphic design, as well as the lyrics booklet of Radiohead's OK Computer, Sachin and Laughlan put together a template for future designs.
In November 2004, after the new edition had been in development for a long time, the new style eclipse (now spelt with only lowercase letters) was revealed to the school. The new edition was characterised by lowercase letters, Arial, wide spacing, and French-style speech marks. Many deemed the new look a success, for the first time ever, the issue sold out, creating more money than ever to send to the Zimbabwean family who the magazine sponsored.
[edit] The Tangerine Editions
However, behind the scenes, things were not perfect. The new look Eclipse had been printed using the school's only colour-laser printer, and had proved prohibitively expensive. The magazine was never intended to be profit-making, but each copy was now costing around £5 to make, compared to the 20p selling price. The mass of printing had taken its toll on the printer too, with the I.T. Staff claiming that they would not print another edition. There were, at the time, doubts over the future of the magazine.
Once again, Mr. Green took up the challenge of finding an alternative and, having spoken with the Bursar, secured sufficient funding to get the magazine printed professionally by Tangerine Design of Kings Langley, who already held a contract to print the school's official newsletter, Concordia.
Eclipse was back on track, and since the change in printing contract, there have been a further 3 editions, with another planned for publication later on this academic term.
Since the total redesign, there have been several special edition covers, most notably Number 14, which featured the word "eclipse" formed out of Scrabble letters.
With the continued support of Mr. David Green, Eclipse continues to sell out every time under the editorship of Laughlan Steer and Sachin Patel.
Current Contributors include Mihir Sanghvi, Tom Nelson, Ben Behrens, James Hinks, Peter Randall, Jonny Shapiro, Calum Mulderrig, Zahid Mitha, Mylo Wilkin, Ahmed Alani, Michael Curtis and Joseph Sanderson.
