For the sixth consecutive year, American Spirit, the magazine we publish for the Daughters of the American Revolution, has been honored with a Grand Award of Excellence from the APEX Awards organization. The Award was made for the May/June 2007 issue. The same issue also collected two Awards of Excellence:
Two other Hammock-published magazines also earned Awards of Excellence.
American Spirit’s Grand Award was one of only six made in the “For Profit” magazine sub-category. This year the Apex Awards judges evaluated 4,479 entries including 837 in the Magazines & Journals category. A total of 120 APEX Grand Awards were presented in 11 major categories and 1,393 APEX Awards of Excellence were presented in 110 individual categories.
We enjoy our work here at Hammock Inc., and we get a great deal of satisfaction from knowing that it’s done well. But we won’t lie and tell you we don’t enjoy a pat on the back from time to time. So we’ve been grinning all day at our recent mention in Folio:, the magazine of the magazine industry.
The article on Folio:’s website details our work in redesigning and repositioning American Spirit, the member magazine we publish for the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
Read on to see how we helped the DAR:
Our CEO, Rex Hammock, has been blogging regularly since 2001. And he’s made a bit of a name for himself out there in the blogosphere. [He kills us for saying stuff like this. No, not “blogosphere.” Well, he doesn’t like that either. But he doesn’t like us bragging on him.]
Back to the bragging: Well recognized for his magazine and digital media savvy, Rex runs in some heady circles, at least via the Rexblog. So we weren’t surprised to see that Junta42’s Top Content Marketing Blogs list ranks the Rexblog as #13. Lucky 13, I say.
Rex wrote an interesting post today on the term content marketing. He takes a little issue with the semantics, but don’t be alarmed. If Hammock Inc. can help you tell your story, the rest of us don’t care what you call it.
For the fifth consecutive year, American Spirit, the magazine we publish for the Daughters of the American Revolution, has been honored with a Grand Award of Excellence from the APEX Awards organization. In making the award, the judges commented: ﾒSpectacular photo spreads, beautifully written, compelling stories, and appealing use of spot color, sidebars and functional captionsﾑall contribute to an enjoyable, absorbing read. Stuck in an elevator? This is the one you want.ﾓ We, of course, recommend reading American Spirit anywhere, especially in locations more comfortable than an elevator; still, the judges’ comments definitely “lifted” our spirits. Seriously, it has been a distinct honor to be afforded the chance to work with DAR and help carry out its programs of preservation, patriotism and education, and we look forward to each issue with great enthusiasm.
What a great way to start our week! Last night, MyBusiness (the magazine we publish for members of the National Federation of Independent Business) was honored at the Folio Show in New York with a prestigious Ozzie design award for best feature design in a business-to-business magazine with a circulation above 100,000. This award is a big one within our industry. At Hammock, we liken it to an Emmy, though as Managing Director John Lavey points out, itﾕs really more like a Golden Globe. Either way, weﾕre thrilled to have won.
The winning entry was a feature in our February/March 2006 issue about a business owner who single-handedly rescued the small town he loved as it teetered on the edge of extinction, like so many other small towns across our country. Congrats to our fabulous design department for their smart work and excellent photo direction.
Select any of the spreads at the left to open a PDF of the full article and see the whole thing in its full-fledged Ozzie-rrific-ness.
Last night, Hammock Publishing participated in the 13th Annual Corporate Spelling Bee, a fund raiser for the Nashville Adult Literacy Council. As many of you’ll remember, Team Hammock (represented by Carrie Wakeford, Bill Hudgins and me, Lena Basha) took home the big championship trophy last year after an awe-inspiring performance.
We got just as many oohs and aahs from the audience this year, amazed at our precision and cheetah-like reflexes when prompted to spell words like inveigle, colloquy and lornette lorgnette, but fell a touch short of first place. Yeah, we didn’t realize kookaburra was spelled with two Os either, but that’s OK.
Congratulations to the fine folks (and exceptional spellers, I might add) at Waller, Landsen, Dortch and Davis, the winners of this year’s spelling bee, and thank you to the Nashville Adult Literacy Council for their gracious hospitality (and free gifts!) and the opportunity to participate in such a fun event.
Congratulations to to the MyBusiness editorial teams at Hammock Publishing and our client, the National Federation of Independent Business, NFIB, for receiving the top editorial honor in the business-to-business publishing field. Today at a ceremony in New York, MyBusiness Manual, a feature in each issue of MyBusiness Magazine, won the The Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for “Best Department” in the large-circulation category. The Neals are the industryﾕs most prestigious and sought-after editorial honors. Established in 1955, the Neal Awards recognize and reward editorial excellence in business-to-business publications. MyBusiness has been published by Hammock Publishing since 2000 for the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest and most influential association of small businesses.
Link: American Business Press press release.
Were always proud of the work we produce along with our clients. But its nice to be recognized for those effortsespecially when the group doing the recognizing is comprised of industry peers.
The Custom Publishing Councils Pearl Awards were announced last week and MyBusiness magazine (the member publication we produce for the 550,000 small-business members of NFIB) won the top award in the Editorial Excellence category for magazines with circulations of more than 125,000.
Woo hoo!!!!…ok, back to work.
From Rex Hammock:
At the Folio Awards on Nov. 1, we learned this Ride magazine cover had won a Silver Ozzie in the non-profit/institutional/custom magazine category.
“It’s nice to be recognized by one’s peers,” as they say in the awards world. The Ozzies are a big deal in the magazine world because they recognize the best design of the year.
I’m very proud of our design team’s consistent performance in the Ozzie awards and am especially proud to learn that a cover from one of our magazines, Ride PWC, is one of three finalists for this year’s Ozzie for Best Cover (association, institutional or custom magazine — it is the official magazine of the American Watercraft Association). Being a finalist in this category is a great honor and I have great hopes that this particular cover wins the Ozzie.
I wouldn’t usually say this (I’d be blowing my “humility” cover), but I’m especially proud of this cover as it knowingly breaks many clich rules of “cover design” yet with great craft and success displays how powerful a medium magazines can be.
The interplay of photograph, typography along with the juxtaposition of words and images all connect in telling a wonderful story.
It makes me want to be down there, riding that PWC across the “R” and off into someplace great. I can just imagine those folks in the cars wishing they were on that PWC. I know the cover connects powerfully with the magazine’s readers in a way that only a PWC enthusiast can truly appreciate.
At Hammock Publishing, we think our job is to help our clients tell their stories. Some people may call this “branding.” We call it storytelling.
This is one of those times when I am not only amazed at how well our team helped tell the AWA & PWC story, they created a classic tale.
On Tuesday, Sept. 20, Team Hammock brought home gold from the 12th Annual Nashville Adult Literacy Council Corporate Spelling Bee, which is a fundraiser for the Nashville Adult Literacy Council. Our team was composed of writer Lena Basha, designer Carrie Wakeford and editorial director Bill Hudgins.
The emcee “Bee Master” was author Ann Patchett, whose work includes Bel Canto. She was witty and enthusiastic and made a great emcee.
There were eight teams in the competition, each with its own table. We had only 45 seconds after getting the word, a definition and a sentence to spell it. We were allowed to confer on each word, although only the captain (Lena for us) could actually spell the word. It was not like the televised National Bee where each contestant stands in the glare of the spotlights, thank goodness.
They narrowed the 8 teams down to 4 after about 45 minutes. We were in the remaining four. They tried to make us move up from our table to another one, after the losing teams left the stage, but Lena wisely refused, knowing we had a lucky table. We are taking her to Tunica very soon.
Two more teams went out fairly quickly – before we quite realized it, the event was down to us and a team from a large local law firm. We went back and forth, then Bill forced Lena to misspell stratagem (he thought it was stratEgem).
Under the rules, the other team had to spell that word correctly, then spell a final word to win. For some odd reason, the judge spelled stratagem out loud, so they had to go to the next word, which was the name of a disease you get from bird droppings – psittacosis.
They misspelled it, so suddenly we were back in the game and got it right. The final word was “raconteur,” which we spelled correctly, and the crowd went wild. John Lavey, our managing director and a longtime member of the literacy council board, did some impressive Heisman poses with the trophy for the cameras and said he was going to Disney World, with the trophy. This was the fourth or fifth team fielded by Hammock and the highest placing by far. Our highest previous finish was fourth.
The event raised $13,000 for NALC.