So we at LMCB are starting a new monthly feature for the site. Over the past few years I have been to several conferences. I usually make it a point to make it to the InDesign or Photoshop sessions. I have learned what I know about these programs from these sessions, books, and talking with others who use the programs. So the Tip of the month will share some of that information.
This month’s tip is simple but extremely time saving. Did I say it’s simple? Alt key and Drag. Got it? Alt and drag. This combination in InDesign allows you to click on an element while holding the alt key and drag to make a duplicate immediately. It is actually faster that copy and pasting the old way. As I continued to play with this I found that it works in the OS as well. In OS X if you Alt drag it will make a copy of the file folder, etc. In XP if you hold control and drag it will do the same thing in the OS, but in In Design it should be Alt drag (I’m not a PC confident as Mac confident).
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Death of Print?/Is Print Dying?
Is Print Dying?
I’m not talking about writing. There are more words being written now then in any other time in our history. Everyone writes a little. Do you text? Do you write on a Blog? Do you Facebook? Do you have a MySpace account? How about Twitter? Words, ideas, and opinions are alive and well in our country.
Printing, the physical ink on paper, is waning. Prices have come down in off-set printing over the past years making printing more affordable, but how is that supposed to compete with the online forums that pop up overnight? It seems that this contest is a lot one sided. In the past few weeks I have heard about four newspapers that are in trouble. Three of them are merging into a single publication to hopefully stem the tide. The other ended up as a complete shock. One of the most well known papers in eastern PA is filing for chapter 11.
I know that this is a blog about Lit Mags, but, if the papers are struggling how long until our magazines are in the same situation? What are we going to do five years from now? The possibility exists for high school lit mags that have a miniscule operational cost. Buy some software once, make everything digital, burn it to a $.10 CD. The cost will be more in time than financial resources. What if you run it on the web? You can keep updating material every week for a few hundred bucks a year.
There are some of us that dread the day that the physical magazine becomes a thing of the past. I love holding the book, mag, paper, whatever, in my hands. I am as giddy as a school boy when the boxes of this year’s magazines is delivered and I can see all of our students hard work in bulk. All of those spins lined up. Nothing like it. I will miss that.
So where does this leave us? The first amendment is alive and well. Words are everywhere. Paper may not be the preference in a few years. What are you going to do to deal with the changing times?
I’m not talking about writing. There are more words being written now then in any other time in our history. Everyone writes a little. Do you text? Do you write on a Blog? Do you Facebook? Do you have a MySpace account? How about Twitter? Words, ideas, and opinions are alive and well in our country.
Printing, the physical ink on paper, is waning. Prices have come down in off-set printing over the past years making printing more affordable, but how is that supposed to compete with the online forums that pop up overnight? It seems that this contest is a lot one sided. In the past few weeks I have heard about four newspapers that are in trouble. Three of them are merging into a single publication to hopefully stem the tide. The other ended up as a complete shock. One of the most well known papers in eastern PA is filing for chapter 11.
I know that this is a blog about Lit Mags, but, if the papers are struggling how long until our magazines are in the same situation? What are we going to do five years from now? The possibility exists for high school lit mags that have a miniscule operational cost. Buy some software once, make everything digital, burn it to a $.10 CD. The cost will be more in time than financial resources. What if you run it on the web? You can keep updating material every week for a few hundred bucks a year.
There are some of us that dread the day that the physical magazine becomes a thing of the past. I love holding the book, mag, paper, whatever, in my hands. I am as giddy as a school boy when the boxes of this year’s magazines is delivered and I can see all of our students hard work in bulk. All of those spins lined up. Nothing like it. I will miss that.
So where does this leave us? The first amendment is alive and well. Words are everywhere. Paper may not be the preference in a few years. What are you going to do to deal with the changing times?
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