Hey friends and future collaborators! We are Kelsey + Mary, the creators of Bucket magazine.
The goal of Bucket is to introduce travelers to unusual and unique destinations. Our destinations won’t be the Eiffel Tower or a luxury resort in Cancún—there’s plenty of information out there about those. Instead, they’re places that (in our opinion) should make it on your “bucket list” of wonderful things to see and experience that you may not have otherwise discovered.
We understand there’s a lot of world to explore and your time is a valuable and limited resource. That’s why Bucket provides in-depth guides to unique destinations. We want you to go to weird and wonderful places, hike big mountains, eat strange food, and have all the information you need to do it.
This magazine is made for the adventure traveler. Our readers are interested in exploring the outdoors, having rich cultural experiences and finding unique and local spots. They are more interested in a vacation that involves hiking to a waterfall than one spent sitting poolside every day (We also love a good pool, but we want both!).
There is so much content about travel. Even with all of that content, though, we find ourselves spending hours scrolling on our phones trying to find where to go to dinner while we are on vacation. The amount of information is overwhelming.
The travel resources currently available aren’t doing it for us.
Bucket fills the gap by providing beautiful, curated content and practical tips delivered right to your door. It’s an easily-accessible and portable guide that isn’t going to lose cell service or run out of battery, making it the best resource when you are exploring off-the-path spots.
Bucket is a bi-annual adventure travel magazine released in April and October. Each issue delves into a region with curated content offering both practical tips and inspiration. It fits somewhere between a guide book and a traditional magazine. Bucket has all of the information of a travel book and the stunning and compelling content of a magazine.
We wanted to create content that eased the pain points of travel. We don’t want you to have to scroll through your phone while you’re on a trip looking for the best spots to go. That’s a waste of your precious vacation time.
So, here’s what we offer:
#1 We are a women-owned and women-led business. We have a team of badass women (professional editors, copywriters, and publishers) who are helping us steer this ship. Historically, men have dominated the outdoor and publishing spaces. So, we are excited to be adding gender diversity to these industries.
#2 Our mission is to make adventure travel more accessible. We want to make travel and the outdoors more available to everyone. We believe every person should feel comfortable exploring the world—regardless of their body size, age, race, or gender. We carve out space in our magazine to discuss that.
Mary is a graphic designer and photographer born, raised, and educated in Illinois. A Midwesterner with a penchant for indulging wanderlust, Mary has photographed 16 countries on four continents. She also spent seven months exploring North America while living in a restored ‘87 Dodge camper van. Bucket lives at the intersection of Mary’s two passions: seeing beautiful things and making beautiful things.
Kelsey started off her career working for Airbnb in San Francisco but soon learned the 9-5 desk job was not for her. She quit her job, sold her things, and left to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. When she came back from her adventure, she knew she wanted to spend more of her time doing the thing she loved: active travel. She now works as a tour guide leading hiking and biking trips around the world. Kelsey loves creating a community around travel—she’s always sharing her travel recommendations and organizing trips of her own.
Issue 1: Southern Utah
Utah is an outdoorperson’s playground, with endless stunning hikes, waterfalls to explore, slot canyons to shimmy through, and hot springs to soak in. This issue is going to have you packing your bags and heading for—what we consider to be—the most underrated state in the US. Here are a few highlights from issue #1:
Glad you asked! By contributing to this Kickstarter campaign, you are helping us with the following:
Printing Costs (50%) Printing a high-quality physical magazine isn’t cheap. We want Bucket magazine to be a beautiful object that can also stand the wear and tear of traveling with you to each destination. The majority of the funds from this campaign will pay for the printing of our first issue. With this first issue, we’ll be building an audience, allowing us to sell ads in future issues. On top of that, we plan to sell these mags in local shops, so we need printed issues to show the shop owners what they can expect.
Paying Contributors (10%) We want everyone to get credit for their work. With the funds from this Kickstarter, we will be able to say thank you to those who helped create the first issue, not with exposure, but with ca$h money. We have three writers and an editor and we will pay them for their amazing contributions.
Next Issue (5%) With the funds, we’ll start working on our next issue. Funds will go to printing costs, paying contributors and photographing our next destination.
Other Start-Up Costs (5%) We have some subscription costs that these funds will help cover. We have to pay for our website (coming soon!), our digital magazine platform and shipping materials.
Kickstarter Fees + Taxes (30%) For this issue, we will owe sales tax as well as federal income tax. Additionally, we pay Kickstarter for processing all of the donations and for hosting us on their website.
Great question. We are in the middle of creating our first issue that will be released in April. All of the content has been written for the first issues, photos have been selected and we are working on the design for issue 1. Going forward, we will finalize the design and paperweight choices. Shortly after editorial review, Issue 1 will ready to go. Our aim is to send this bad boy off to the printer by February 29.
Bucket is a playful and beautiful mag that will help you plan adventure-oriented trips to unique destinations. We want to bring it to life and we need your help to make it happen.
Printing a magazine takes time. There is some back and forth that happens between us and the printer to make sure it looks just right. Though we are on track to have them printed by April, there’s always a chance the printing is delayed. We plan to send our magazines to the printer mid February and have it in your hands by April. By allotting two months for the printing process, we should avoid any delays.