Charlie Magazine
Birdseye co-founder Jozefien Daelemans werkte verschillende jaren als illustratrice, vormgeefster en art director voor enkele bekende vrouwenbladen.
Gefrustreerd dat ze daarin steeds dezelfde beelden en verhalen zag terugkomen, richtte ze in 2015 Charlie Magazine op, het taboeloze en inspirerende online magazine dat ze zelf altijd had willen lezen.
Het online magazine kreeg meteen een grote groep geëngageerde fans en lezers en hield de vinger aan de pols van een veranderende wereld. En hoewel Charlie Mag begin 2020 noodgedwongen werd stilgelegd, blijft het een veel geciteerde bron in maatschappelijke discussies in Vlaanderen.
Client
Personal projects
Our services
Timing
- 2018-2020
Charlie Magazine has been a community-driven and grass roots movement from the start. We started in 2015 with a simple proof of concept but after the initial wave of positive reactions it quickly became clear to us that a platform like Charlie Magazine not only had the necessary support, but was a necessity. So we organized a successful crowdfunding campaignto further professionalize Charlie Magazine.
From Startup to Company
With the proceeds from our crowdfunding we refined our brand, published the first Charlie Mag bookzines and built a custom wordpress site aimed at ‘long-form’ articles and a optimization of audience participation and engagement.
Bookzines en swag
Our Bookzines were not only distributed in Flemish bookstores and newspaper dealers, but also through in the Netherlands and in our own webshop. Quite a logistics undertaking: in five years we distributed more than 35,000 bookzines!
Besides bookzines we also designed a lot of swag: pins, totebags, t-shirts and more.
Studio Charlie
Because we were attracting more and more engaged authors, editors and motivated speakers with Charlie Magazine, we decided to gather all that talent in our own speaker agency: Studio Charlie.
We built a new website listing of those speakers and their expertise and the possibility to book them for events and conferences.
For five years we worked extremely hard on Charlie Magazine: we quickly built up a large following and an engaged community and in doing so contributed to the public debate around themes such as diversity, representation and women’s rights. Our authors and speakers were frequently quoted and invited by other media channels in Flanders.
But it turned out to be untenable to continue Charlie Magazine solely on goodwill & the unbridled commitment of volunteers and given the limited attention from investors and advertisers, it was decided to shut Charlie down at the beginning of 2020.
The sitecontinues to exist as an online archive and reference and still attract s thousands of visitors per month in 2021.
