Aspiring journalists have launched a new online student magazine which is written, designed and published within 24 hours.

The magazine is based around a different theme each time, with a different name to reflect each chosen topic – and the team, who are all studying at Edinburgh University, have just one day to pull all content together to be published.

Editor Lydia Willgress, a third-year English literature student, said she enjoyed the buzz of having that strict time limit – and said it helps to keep her going during the final few hours.

“It has been fantastic – I get really nervous beforehand but as soon as we start working on it, the excitement takes over,” she said.

“We got the idea for it from a company in America who do 24-hour magazines, which we came across and decided to try doing one ourselves.

“The idea behind it is that you pick a theme from a hat in the morning and go with that, but I changed that as I wanted to include more features, which means you need to set up interviews.

“Other than that, thought, nothing is really done until the day.”

The first edition she was involved with attracted a readership of 8,000 within the first two days, she said, while the second edition got around 20,000 views – helped in no small part by a recommendation from Richard Branson, whose son appeared on the cover.

The front cover of the last edition of the students' 24-hour online magazine, featuring an interview with Sam Branson

“That was exciting – he said he was always impressed by innovative new projects and recommended that people check us out, which I think probably helped direct people to us,” she said.

“I’ve been amazed at how much we have been able to do within 24 hours. Watching it all come together is very exciting and very rewarding.”

Lydia is also the deputy editor of the university’s history, classics and archaeology journal Retrospect.

The magazine is published on Issuu.com.