It's an exciting year for Brainspace magazine.
The kids’ science publication based in Newmarket is marking its 10th anniversary and is celebrating a global expansion, publishing in French, Spanish, and distributing in China.
“We’re going to be the first Canadian kids’ magazine to be publishing in China,” said founder and publisher Nicky Middleton.
She said their content will actually be distributed within China, which is something only one other children’s magazine in North America is doing right now.
Brainspace is a print publication that leverages augmented reality (AR) technology — check out the video below to see it in action — to interest children aged eight to 14 in reading and learning about science. It launched in April 2013.
The magazine is headquartered in a converted garage studio at Middleton’s Newmarket home, with a team of freelance writers from around Canada, including as far as Halifax.
Middleton was working as an educator in Montessori schools when she first learned about AR.
“When I came across augmented reality, I thought, ‘Holy cow. What a really good way to engage kids,’” she said.
Immediately, she knew she wanted to create a magazine and integrate the technology. From the beginning, she used AR and a free phone app to allow readers to scan a page of the magazine and watch it come to life, and she continues to do so today.
For example, if there’s a dinosaur on the cover, kids can scan it and see the dinosaur move around and roar. But there are also more educational AR elements, like scanning a page to see a video tutorial of a craft or getting an in-depth look at a story.
Because most of these videos don’t typically have talking in them, Middleton said it has allowed them to transition easily into printing in other languages.
There was a big demand for quality French-language education materials in Canada, and it’s the same with Spanish materials in the United States, where Brainspace has a large clientele. With the help of funding from Ontario Creates, Brainspace was able to create content in both of these languages and soon it will be available in China, too.
Middleton said seeing the magazine grow over the past 10 years has been rewarding. Now it has nearly 3,000 subscribers around the world, including the U.S., England and Africa.
“I think, as a business, there is no fast way to success. You really have to be creative and keep plugging away, but I look back on our first year and the nights waking up at three o’clock in the morning thinking, ‘My god, what have we done?’ And then it’s the letters from the readers and from the teachers and from people saying, ‘This is so awesome’ ... It’s stuff like that that makes you keep going,” she said.
Middleton said she is proud of how far the magazine has come, especially as it expands into new global markets, and that they are going to keep going.
