It was great to meet all of the Lit Mag people in St. Louis this morning. Bob and I had a great time, and really enjoyed being able to present . We had 70 people in attendance! We will be working on making the presentation into a movie/podcast. We will be posting it either here or on the PSPA website.
Again it was great to meet all of you.
Showing posts with label Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Development. Show all posts
Friday, November 14, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
An approach to developing the Theme
One of the key components to your magazine will be the theme. In the magazines that I have worked on the theme has taken on several forms. In the first magazine, Surfaces, the theme was based around different surface textures. That was carried into the arrangement of the content in the magazine from soft textures to hard or rough textures. The literature followed the sections with the lighter happier things in the front, soft section, and the deeper harder things, like death in the end. It is the only of the magazines I have worked on that used sections.
We moved onto a concept that the theme could be based on a simple shape or design. We started with the exclamation point. “!”, that’s it. We based the design, and even the final size of the magazine on the exclamation point. Last year’s was based on squares, and a folio design that disappeared as you flip through the book. This allowed for us to try and connect the 40th edition with a theme that disappeared, tying into fading memories.
So where does this leave us now? Our last magazine didn’t fair, nationally, as we had hoped. In retrospect, we did not tie the design and the theme together as well as we could have. Now we are starting from square one. Literally! As my cohort has alluded to in the previous post, we are looking at redesigning the magazine from square one. We are learning from our current staff that our magazine, while strong with design, is not appealing to the student body. We have discussed the fact that we need to make a magazine that the students want to pick up and look at. We want them to need to have this magazine.
The staff has begun to think about what we need. In the preliminary discussions they feel that there needs to be a little bit of mystery to the cover. They think that if we make the cover design mysterious and intriguing, students will want to pick it up. The students are thinking that the redesign of the magazine is really going to rely on the theme.
When Bob and I began tossing this idea of redesigning the magazine, we were thinking that the design of the magazine and the theme can be separated. In our minds there can be an underlying design that permeates throughout each year’s magazine. There are pieces of the magazine that can be similar from magazine to magazine. The page, or spread, can be divided the same each year. The folio can be located in the same area and the magazine can be the same physical dimensions.
As we talked with the students, Bob and I came to the realization that the students are not seeing the difference in what he and I are talking about and the theme. As I am writing this what I am realizing is that what the advisers are talking about are the starting points of the theme. These are the decisions that have to be the first things that you think about when putting your theme, and the magazine, together. We ran into a problem years ago with the Surfaces edition of Charisma. We decided to use 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages, but they were on their side. Instead of Tabloid we had a spread that was 22 inches wide by 8 1/2 inches tall. We wanted the magazine perfect bound, but the cost of the paper that was needed for this doubled the cost of the cover.
By setting the size of the spread and page size, you can get an idea of cost from the start. Dividing the pages up, using a grid system, similarly will lend a style for the magazine. If you stylize your magazines title and cover design, to an extent, you can develop a standard for your magazine. This is not to say that the magazine should look identical from year to year. Setting a standard that will be used every year, you can focus on the content of the magazine. This is where our magazine has mainly faltered in the past few years. So there are benefits to taking one set of decisions out of the mix and allowing the staff to focus on other things.
So what is the moral of this? The design of the magazine needs to grab the attention of the consumer. The theme, while being a major part of that, can have an underlying construct that guides how parts of the magazine will look from year to year. As we work through this idea of a redesign, we are going to be looking at every aspect of the magazine. A successful magazine has to do this every few years. If you don’t revisit this your magazine becomes stagnant and loses its appeal.
We moved onto a concept that the theme could be based on a simple shape or design. We started with the exclamation point. “!”, that’s it. We based the design, and even the final size of the magazine on the exclamation point. Last year’s was based on squares, and a folio design that disappeared as you flip through the book. This allowed for us to try and connect the 40th edition with a theme that disappeared, tying into fading memories.
So where does this leave us now? Our last magazine didn’t fair, nationally, as we had hoped. In retrospect, we did not tie the design and the theme together as well as we could have. Now we are starting from square one. Literally! As my cohort has alluded to in the previous post, we are looking at redesigning the magazine from square one. We are learning from our current staff that our magazine, while strong with design, is not appealing to the student body. We have discussed the fact that we need to make a magazine that the students want to pick up and look at. We want them to need to have this magazine.
The staff has begun to think about what we need. In the preliminary discussions they feel that there needs to be a little bit of mystery to the cover. They think that if we make the cover design mysterious and intriguing, students will want to pick it up. The students are thinking that the redesign of the magazine is really going to rely on the theme.
When Bob and I began tossing this idea of redesigning the magazine, we were thinking that the design of the magazine and the theme can be separated. In our minds there can be an underlying design that permeates throughout each year’s magazine. There are pieces of the magazine that can be similar from magazine to magazine. The page, or spread, can be divided the same each year. The folio can be located in the same area and the magazine can be the same physical dimensions.
As we talked with the students, Bob and I came to the realization that the students are not seeing the difference in what he and I are talking about and the theme. As I am writing this what I am realizing is that what the advisers are talking about are the starting points of the theme. These are the decisions that have to be the first things that you think about when putting your theme, and the magazine, together. We ran into a problem years ago with the Surfaces edition of Charisma. We decided to use 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages, but they were on their side. Instead of Tabloid we had a spread that was 22 inches wide by 8 1/2 inches tall. We wanted the magazine perfect bound, but the cost of the paper that was needed for this doubled the cost of the cover.
By setting the size of the spread and page size, you can get an idea of cost from the start. Dividing the pages up, using a grid system, similarly will lend a style for the magazine. If you stylize your magazines title and cover design, to an extent, you can develop a standard for your magazine. This is not to say that the magazine should look identical from year to year. Setting a standard that will be used every year, you can focus on the content of the magazine. This is where our magazine has mainly faltered in the past few years. So there are benefits to taking one set of decisions out of the mix and allowing the staff to focus on other things.
So what is the moral of this? The design of the magazine needs to grab the attention of the consumer. The theme, while being a major part of that, can have an underlying construct that guides how parts of the magazine will look from year to year. As we work through this idea of a redesign, we are going to be looking at every aspect of the magazine. A successful magazine has to do this every few years. If you don’t revisit this your magazine becomes stagnant and loses its appeal.
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