VS Fall/Winter (Preview Video) – It’s been a ride from Castro Desroches on Vimeo.
Here’s a taste of an upcoming video I’m putting together featuring the H! Guys. Enjoy the video, expect the full length Interview in the coming weeks.
*Song – “Heaven or Hell” – Tyga
It’s been a journey through the last few months but it’s all worth it. Issue 2 is finally here, take your pick among the 6 limited edition covers only available until this Christmas. Stay tuned for updates on events, giveaways, and if you want to help out, advertise, or just want more info on how to be apart of the magazine email me at Castro@viralstatus.com.
I had a very long and interesting conversation with an individual on facebook yesterday. He was pretty much doing the same thing I was doing except giving emphasis in a different way. My VS venture revolves around the tangible magazine, with the website as the to extend the experience, where his project was a mainly driven by the website, with the hopes of extending it into a magazine once his following has grown. It’s a solid foundation and a good path to success, but I’m not sure…I don’t think a path like that is the right one for me.
I truly feel like I can bring VS to the forefront by bringing a unique experience to the print and web worlds. I hear it all the time and heard it last night, “print is dying…”. Yes I do believe that when the numbers add up it can be percieved that print is dying but I do believe I live in a world where the interaction between print and web is untapped, and I have plans to bridge that soon.
I don’t have to go the typical route, and do the typical thing. I want VS to be anything but typical, and blazing my own trail will be the only way to catch the kind attention I want.
Branding and image are one of the most important aspects of marketing yourself, your product, anything. If you want to sell yourself (professionally obviously) you NEED to look your best…present your absolute best foot forward, put everything out on the table and make it look really good 
, and 9 times out of 10 you’ll get what you want based on presentation alone. Unfortunately this hold true for almost everything, and I say unfortunately because there are many people, businesses, and organizations that fail at this miserably but epitomize the meaning of quality.
Branding is the force that brings you ahead of the pack…that screams “LOOK AT ME!” It’s the charisma, witty conversation, or the catchy phrase that wins you, and everyone else over.
When applying it to my own endeavors it becomes a tricky subject. As VS is undergoing the construction of issue 2, I realize that it is still in an evolutionary phase. What I mean by this is the art style, the mission, the targeted groups, and the following that I have so far is all undetermined, and I’m working purely on what I think will work, and at any given time things may change. Established franchises that I gather influences from such as GQ, Details, and Complex spend hundreds of thousands on market research, art direction, and also have a strong force of guerrilla’s working in the streets and pulling in piles of information. And it’s for this reason why I bring up branding today.
When you pick up a copy of V.S. magazine in the coming weeks (subconsciously) there are expectations in your mind that I MUST meet. And it’s not because your extremely critical of the work of my contributors and myself but because we are all built on past experiences, and are all exposed to things that we have all accepted to be normal. When you think of a magazine, traditionally you think 100+ pages, engaging/eye-catching visuals, witty and interesting articles, and most importantly PHOTOS. Photos are king, and even when I purchase a copy of my favorite mag, I flip through the entire thing without reading a word… The second time I flip through I read only what I think I’d find interesting (based on the photos), and the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time I might dibble dabble in a few others but for the most part I almost never read the whole thing. This is why I must keep evolving…stylistically, content wise, and branding wise…to keep you coming back. This can be applied to almost anything in life, if you continue to evolve…learn new things, explore new routes, you will only do good in keeping your image fresh and interesting.
A few changes are in effect when it comes to the moniker or tag-line in explaining VS. I used to say VS is a fashion and lifestyle magazine for the fashion-forward youth of this generation. However after evaluating the latest issue, and looking forward I now want to say VS is the style and culture magazine for the fashionably inclined few. I make these changes because 1. The word fashion is heavy when it comes to dropping names in the fashion world, whether it be designers, fashion/runway events, etc… and VS as of right now does not focus on that, in-turn we focus more on empowering ways to dress for the right occasion, knowing where and how to shop, and just an overall guide to style and technique.
The reason for the change from “fashion-forward youth of this generation” to “fashionably inclined few” is because it’s naturally limiting and narrowing to only say “youth”…and besides much of our stylistic views, and guides are viable for all age groups. And also the word “few” makes the holder feel as if they’re part of a niche group that’s “doing it the right way” in a sense, or in other words…you’ll feel a bit special…as you should!
Another change decided on was web-content. No longer will the site have random posts on various products found on the web. I’m sure there’ll be 1 or 2 still in the future but real writing is much more engaging I feel, and copy and pasted articles on new sneakers is not something I want to place next to the brand of VS. This holds true for a friend of mine Sherifa that also runs her own blog called Blackandugly.com as she began writing full-size articles on her site earlier this summer.
In wrapping this post up I think I’ve hit a few points in terms of stating the groundwork for my V.S. project, but also unexpectedly expressed some of the key ideas V.S. exude in it’s own pages, look good, feel good, ooze greatness.
You can expect to see some more great posts in the near future, and of course VS magazine issue 2 in the coming weeks, as well as the accompanying launch event. Thanks for reading
Here’s a look into the creation of Viral Status magazine issue 2 (Fall/Winter). As of late I’ve been extremely busy trying to finish up this project; So much so that I’ve put absolutely everything in the backseat: school, friends, sleep, etc… However on Friday night the file for VS issue 2 became corrupted! 
I was frantically looking, and searching for a fix but to my dismay found none that proved to be helpful. About 20 pages were lost, and I’ve been home all weekend working through the day and night rebuilding. This was the weekend to wrap things up, but in turn I’ve just been recreating 7 days worth of work. At this point I’m pretty much done rebuilding, and now working on new layouts for the few articles I have to include. The project is officially pushed back, but not that much. Stay tuned in the coming days for more posts, and updates!
