Printing Options

So, now onto Part II of the response.

"I'm an editor of the literary magazine at Aspen High School in Colorado. Our litmag team has a theme (Spectrum), but we are short on ideas for layout and overall design. I'm also interested in cheaper methods of printing, having gone far over budget on our last two editions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated." -Lars

To discuss the second part of this comment. Printing, I think, is the biggest headache in publishing. In the short time that I have been involved with the printing part of the magazine I have seen a lot of stuff. We have gone from having the mag cover and binding pulled out from under us, to having the printer that we were working with being bought out.
In last year's magazine ! (Yep that's it "!"), we stumbled onto Duotone. This is a photoshop tool that can make a grayscale image appear to have a single color in it. You convert the image to grayscale and select a pantone color. It is hard to explain with out looking at an image or Photoshop. By doing this you give the impression of color in grayscale images, without the cost of 4-color. In your layout software, you can also create swatches using the pantone color that you used for the duotone image. This means that you are only going to be printing in black and one color. Pantone inks are the same, no matter what printer you go to. Pantone colors take the place of one of the inks that are part of CMYK. So you are only printing in two colors.

Binding is also something that can save you money. Look at several printers in your area. Talk to them and explain what you are doing. Perfect binding is one expensive option. You can go with a stapled binding as well. It really depends on what you want. Ask the printers for examples of their printing and their binding.

The last option, that I have to be honest I have little knowledge of, is online printing. Do a Google search and go from there.

I hope that this post, and the previous post, help to answer your questions Lars.

Developing the Theme

Thank you to Lars for the post. Let's look at the first part here.

"I'm an editor of the literary magazine at Aspen High School in Colorado. Our lit mag team has a theme (Spectrum), but we are short on ideas for layout and overall design. I'm also interested in cheaper methods of printing, having gone far over budget on our last two editions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated."
-Lars

Once the idea for a theme is there, you hit a wall. It is one of the hardest parts of the magazine. You have an idea and everywhere to go with it. It can be daunting. Our staff has actually had to go back to scratch after our first idea really wouldn't pan out. So we are at the same point that Spectrum is.

At this point you need to look at what possibilities your theme can offer you. It doesn't need to be an exhaustive list, but don't stop at the first idea. This is not the same list that I talked about before.
I am an art teacher. I drive my students crazy with thumbnail sketches. For those non-artists out there, these are very basic sketches that help to organize the artist's thoughts as they develop an idea. I tell my students all of the time that their first idea is very rarely going to be the best.
Start your list of ideas. The list can be doodles, words, what ever helps to get the ideas out on paper. Then review the list and see what ideas have the most potential. Our staff is actually doing some research to help develop an idea that we are pursuing. They are bringing their ideas back to the group at our next meeting. We will go from there.
Don't be afraid to scrap an idea that you have worked on for a while. Sometimes things get published that should have been scrapped before publishing. It's a hard thing to realize and harder thing to actually do something about.

Once you have an inkling about where to go start looking at how the layout can be tied into the theme. The ideas that you just came up with should be a guide for the design. Can your theme be reflected in a folio? Should it be part of the folio or should the folio be simple? What colors are you going to use (Spectrum really opens the color realm, but that may not be how you want to go with this.)? Sections or no sections?

Above are the things to keep in mind as you design. If you're still nervous about the idea it can't hurt to start developing things in the computer. You may stumble onto something as you begin creating.

The Theme

So the next thing that we are working on is the theme for this year's magazine. The theme is the soul of the magazine. It controls the look and feel of the magazine. In some cases it may even dictate the submissions that are put in the magazine. The theme can be as simple as a shape or graphic element or as multi-layered as surfaces. The theme should be your first decision before anything else can be done. So what goes into the theme?
When I am trying to come up with an idea I create a list of things. The staff sits around and generates a list of ideas for possible themes. It starts off really random, but the more random the better. The longer the list, the better. From that list the staff discusses and narrows down the big list to a few choices.
In theory the items that are on the small list (Hopefully four or five ideas) are expanded. What I mean is, those ideas should be developed a little. Sketch out a concept for the cover, sections (If you use them), a folio line and anything else that comes with the development discussion.
With those ideas fleshed out a little, a decision needs to be made final. It is important that the theme that is chosen will flow through the magazine. It will help to bring the pages together and create a gestalt for your magazine.

Stuck for ideas? Take a look at magazines from home. You can use these layouts as a style guide, but more importantly you can use them to give your magazine a modern edge. It also helps to communicate with other high school literary magazines. Exchange copies of your magazines. See what they are doing. Ask them how they are creating the effects and themes. It is OK to borrow ideas but not to copy them.

Organization

So today I thought, "I guess the best place to start is organization." Now my colleague and I have a little bit of a difference in organizational philosophies when dealing with files and papers and whatnot. However, that is not what I mean. The way you set up your staff can work for you or against you.
The most important thing in building your team is to have an editor-in-chief that will oversee the operations of the magazine. He/She has to understand, up front, that they make the decisions and are responsible for others completing their jobs. People doing their jobs leads to success.
So here's our line up:
-Editor-in-Chief
-Assistant to the Editor
-Production Supervisor (Money person)
-Layout Editor
-Literary Editor
-Art Editor

Others that join the magazine that don't have one of the jobs listed are put onto teams that support these positions. Those teams are:
-Production Team (Money/Sponsors)
-Lit Team (Collection/review of lit submissions)
-Art Team (Collection/review of art submissions)

So that is the organizational make up of our magazine. For as many magazines, there are as many variations on staff organization. The key to a good staff ends up being the editor-in-chief.

Welcome to our Mystery Co-Contributer

Well, I tried to keep him away from this blog, but he found it way to fast! :-)

The co-contributer and I will be filling this blog with a lot of information. Some of it is great, some not so great, but it will show you what goes into making the magazine.

Doesn't he have anything else to do?

Seriously though I enjoy these blogs and even literary magazines sometimes. The fact that Charisma for this year has been lost somewhere out in the midwest rather than being judged for the PSPA contest has not dampened my spirits. I think literary magazines are cool, and Mr. McVitty is cool too.

The Beginning

The point of this blog is to discuss, hopefully in an interactive way, what it takes to build a high school literary magazine from beginning to end. This blog will be updated weekly, but I will not promise a blogging schedule.
Feel free to add comments about our topics and posts, but be aware that I am moderating the comments.
I hope that this site will be just one resource for other publication advisers around the country.