Using Grids

        So, it has been a while since we talked about the layout of a magazine. Currently our staff is working on this years magazine layout. They have started with laying out the cover design which is a change. In the past three issues, the staff has designed the folio first and the cover became nothing more than an afterthought. I am interested to see how this approach works.

        One of the techniques that I approached the students with was the use of a grid system to divide up the page. One of the most common uses of a grid is the concept of “Rule-of-Thirds”. For those of you who don’t know what this is, the “Rule-of-Thirds” is a grid that photographers use to align their subject in the image. Imagine looking through a camera. Now imagine that there is a grid that divides your viewfinder into thirds vertically and horizontally. By lining up your subject, or the majority of your subject on one of the inner four corners or the edges of the inside rectangle, you create a stronger composition.



        Now take that rule-of-thirds idea and apply it to layout. By dividing the page up using a grid you force yourself to begin composing the page rather than throwing stuff on the page. The grid brings stability and strength to your layout composition. When applying this grid to a layout it does not need to be in thirds. It could be in fourths, eighths, sixteenths, etc. By dividing your pages you are giving yourself a rough template that makes the layout from page to page easier and faster.

        Obviously, if you have any layout experience, you have heard of people using columns to control layout. While this allows you to divide and work with the layout horizontally it doesn’t take care of the vertical aspects of your layout. It also allows you to begin the process of designing your folio in a much broader sense. For last year’s layout we began by dividing the page into fourths and filling in blocks in different arrangements.

        This forced us to think about where the written and visual information of the folio would happen in the layout. (Yes, for those of you who noticed, our layout last year involved a folio that, vertically, was almost 1/4 of the page.) By working this way we could actually start laying out the pages without having the folio design done, or even started.



        Try using the grid as a way to govern your pages. It may seem, at first, that you are going to drive your design into a rut. It’s okay to think that. I think that you will find that the grid is actually quite flexible and can help your designs. See how it works for you.

St. Louis II

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.

Press Organizations

        Does your state have a student press association? Do you belong to it? Did you know that there are several national student press associations? Do you belong to any of them?

        With the JEA/NSPA conference in less than a week, I have been thinking about what we are trying to do with this blog and what resources are out there. One of the best ways to get help with you publications, other than this blog, is to join your state organization. These organizations are structured differently from state to state, however, they all work to help advisers and publication staff to develop their magazines. They also give you a network of people who are passionate about publications as well. I have mentioned this topic before, but as I become more involved with these organizations, I see the potential that they provide for networking and guidance.
        Bob and I are on the eve of becoming the President (Bob) and Vice President (Mike) of the Pennsylvania School Press Association. We work with a group of professionals that are passionate about publications and spreading our knowledge throughout Pennsylvania and beyond. We are also on the eve of presenting in St. Louis. We helped with the JEA/NSPA conference in Philadelphia last year. All of these things have given us the chance to share and learn from a lot of people from around our state and nation. These interactions have helped us with our publication as much as any help we were able to provide.

        Become a member of a press organization! Get involved! You will meet a lot of other great advisers and professionals. You can avail yourself of the resources that a press organization can provide.

        If you would like to learn more about PSPA check us out online at www.paschoolpress.org

Presentation In St. Louis

Dear readers,

Robert Hankes and I will be presenting at the Fall JEA/NSPA conference that is in St. Louis. The conference is running from the 13th to 16th of November. If you are going to be at the conference stop in. We would love to see you. We are going to spend our time discussing how our magazine evolved last year. We will be doing some show and tell and some group participation activities.

Here is the current information:
Lit Mag Theme Development Exposé
Friday Nov. 14 9:00 am
America’s Center (Convention Center) Room 104

Here is the blurb that is in the Pre-conference brochure:

What really happens when a dozen varied students plan out a theme for the literary magazine? What is the role of the advisers when things are going south? And when does one give up? Robert Hankes and Mike McVitty will review how last year's edition of Charisma turned "40".

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.