About us
- Introduction
- The story of iT's
- Our titles and online resources
- Creative team
- Website design
- Audio production
- Testimonials
- Sponsors
The early years
1990 to 1996
"Wednesday, October 3, 1990: Eventually the magazines arrive-thousands of them. I take some up to Diagonal and sell my first copy! Day ends with a beer and a very late Chinese meal."
Back in the early years it was always a mad rush to meet the deadline. That's not changed. It's always a race against time. One thing that has changed drastically over the years is the mechanics of how a magazine is made. It's a business in which so many jobs have disappeared to be replaced by new technology. Back in the old days hard copies of all the pages went to the printers with the designer's instructions written on them so that the printer could go through the laborious craft of turning ideas and notes on paper into a printed magazine.
So
why is iT called iT's?
I'm always surprised by how many people think the title iT's comes from the opening sequence of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the comedy TV series which starts with a caveman running towards the camera to say, "It's….." before being crushed by the opening credits.
The title in fact comes from a newspaper advertisement I saw that read, "It's Time!" It grabbed my attention because I was feeling that the time had come to do something new. Time had already been used as a magazine title, but It's seemed a good alternative. The word it's also seemed a good choice because it could be used in so many different ways. Anyone who has started a business knows how easy it is to believe that a small business will grow into an empire. After iT's Magazines there would be the record label (iT's Music) and then the airline (iT's Air)!
As
far as I can remember, it was Juan Carlos Mena, our original designer,
who had the idea of the small i followed by the capital T.
The cover photo of the first issue came from the film The Day the
Earth Stood Still. On the cover it read simply, "It's here!"
The cover was originally going to be black and white, but when Columbia
Pictures asked for a colour ad on the back cover we didn't argue.
After the euphoria of publishing the first issue of the magazine came the challenge of producing the next ones. Issues 2 and 3 are critical in the life of any new magazine, with many titles disappearing as they run out of money, ideas, advertisers or readers! The early issues of iT's were important because they defined the magazine's character.
With thanks to...
Our regular contributors back in the early days included Cathy Ellis, who had a regular spread on the peculiarities of the English language, Seamas Campbell, who contributed a series of emergency activities; John Pidcock, who helped solve readers' teaching problems; and Mike Combellack, who kept us up to date with the latest technology news. Victoria Ennion dedicated hours to helping things run smoothly, while Juan Carlos Mena taught me that less means more in the world of graphic design and magazine layout.
Apart from all the people who helped create the magazine, it was thanks to all the teachers who used the magazine in those early days that we're still here today. In 1991 we organised a competition in which we asked teachers to encourage their students to create a piece of work related to the theme of heroes. The response was amazing, and in April 1992 we published an issue that consisted entirely of the work submitted by teachers throughout Spain.
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"original and motivating resources for teachers and learners of English as a foreign or second language"