The Business Enterprise: Management Kids’ Primer

I have said this at many places that few magazines are simply conceived & started by their editors/publishers without having any publication sense. Just because they have got some expertise in a particular domain or few hundreds or thousands contacts in that segment, they start thinking that they should now start a magazine for this community on this subject. And, my belief gets even stronger, whenever I come across magazines like – The Business Enterprise. This is the newly launched publication from Brisk Corporate Services Pte. Ltd. Chennai.

Though it is claimed to be a complete enterprise magazine but actually it seems just a compilation of an absolutely general management & business articles those you can find in any of beginners management books or even in business supplements of news papers.

Content

If it was focused, it was structured & designed (editorially) as per the positioning of this magazine; it could have done a great job. But, the way it is now, it is very shallow & vague in terms of depth of content. In the editorial note of inaugural issue it is mentioned that this magazine will cater from micro to macro issue of not only business but for entire enterprise. But I think in order to cater everybody at all the stages, the magazine has lost it focus.

Though, it is good that entire magazine is divided into few sections but these sections don’t have their own identity. Also, entire creativity of copy-desk must be drained in naming these sections only otherwise I can’t see any reason for a serious business magazine having all the section names (deliberately) starting with the alphabet – ‘E’…!!! It looks weird while going through these section names – Enlighten, Exclusive, Entertain, Envision, Evolve, Engage… Eeeik! May be it is because they must have thought to use the same ‘E’ in each section name that is used in Mast-head of magazine- Enterprise (it is my assumption)!

As I have already mentioned in starting itself that entre issue looks like a collection of white papers or chapters of some self-motivation book or some management school book for dummies. Few articles are so general as if they are targeted to a layman or written for a general interest magazine or newspaper. Topics covered in the issue are so amateur and top of that copy desk work is also not impressive. Headlines are so dull and boring that you don’t even feel to read the article in first place.

Design

Entire magazine is very immaturely designed! Designer has tried all his imagination and all the available effects provided by the layout software. I have never seen so tiny font size for the body copy in any of magazines. That too, with variable column width... and height(!!) unlocked baseline…! Unnecessary variations in typefaces, illogical colors & effects on headlines are good enough to spoil the seriousness of the magazine.

Mostly stock images are used for the layout or downloaded from the internet. Those foreigners’ images fail to connect you with the core article, where characters & environment described in the article are Indian.

Poor illustrations, carelessly done cut-outs & useless infographics- don’t add any value to the articles. Almost every article has different color scheme for titles, sub heads, drop caps, boxes…! There is no consistency or any logic behind so many variations in design. Illustration styling is also changing in every article, that leaves very bad impression.

Cover of inaugural issue is designed very vague & carelessly. Uneven leading, text cluttering, mismatched & proportionate size of typeface, wrong back ground color for the inaugural issue and almost merged top band….over all – a bad cover!!!

Printing

Prepress work is pathetic. Lots of images are printed in improper sizes. Either they are over stretched or they are used in wrong aspect ratios. Lots of images are printed in low resolution and so are printed as pixalated.

Printing is ok as it has come out well. Pictures, which were good, are printed in good with all the details. It could have come out even better if pre-press job was done perfectly.

Product

Inaugural issue consists of 84 pages only that is quite less if you look it as a monthly magazine for such a wide genre. Content pages of this issue also reflecting the less content in the magazine. Paper quality is ok but less number of pages and less number of articles don’t satisfy the TG’s hunger for the content for monthly periodicity even for Rs.50 for the cover price.

Overall, The Business Enterprise seems a shallow, disoriented and poorly packaged magazine. As it is structured currently, it is nowhere close to any established business or entrepreneur magazine and if it is not tweaked at right points, it has to struggle to first, find or create its own space in the industry and second, to survive with that positioning.

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