At last a discussion group about magazines

There are plenty of discussion lists for small scale book publishers, but not for those who publish, or are thinking about publishing, a magazine or newsletter. So it is good to see a new yahoo group has started for "Independent periodical" publishers. So far, after a few days, it has 50 members in 6 countries, mostly, to judge by introductory messages, those thinking about starting a publication. While several people were saying it would be a good idea to have such a list, Donyell Nelson who publishes CraftGuru online and print magazine, actually did something about it. The list is at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndependentPeriodicals/

Thinking like a program

Sometimes you just have to think the way the original programmers did -- and with a program like PageMaker that may mean thinking the way they would have done in the 1980s.

This week there was a plea from an editor who had some ancient files originally created in PageMaker 5 (that's back at the time the program was owned by a company called Aldus and when it was a stablemate of FreeHand rather than Illustrator).

They just wouldn't open -- or rather they would start to open and then bring up a message of "Cannot complete action - File not found".

This wasn't the usual problem of cross-platform files; they'd been created on a Mac and this was still a Mac.

The user was keen enough to check via BBEdit that the file structure he'd recreated was identical to that used when the file was created -- but still no luck.

Eventually, and almost in desperation, I suggested: "What may be worth trying is to move all the linked files to somewhere where the program can't possibly find them, and then see if you can get the files to open with lost link messages."

That's not so easy as operating systems have become increasingly clever -- our user moved the linked files to the desktop, and they were still found. Fortunately the Mac OS creators left one place where the intelligence of the system won't follow -- the trash.

With the linked files in the trash, the latest PageMaker opened the ancient files without a hiccup. Then the linked files were moved back from trash to the original folder, and they relinked without a hitch.

In our voyage of discovery I reinstalled PageMaker 5 and it is now sitting happily alongside InDesign. I also found my original floppies for PageMaker 4, but they remain untouched -- for now.

Books on InDesign

At the InDesign conference (see my previous post), I saw one of the early copies of Deke McClelland's new book Adobe InDesign CS one-on-one, published by Deke Press in association with O'Reillys. Previously I've said there was one starter's book in InDesign, Sandee Cohen's Visual QuickStart Guide for InDesign CS and one for those who have got through the basics, Olav Kvern and David Blatner's Real World InDesign CS. Now I'd add Deke's book to that. It falls between the two -- with a lot of basic stuff but then delving deeply enough to satisfy most users, and covers a few things the Kvern/Blatner book cover less fully (and there isn't much they don't cover!). Deke's book also benefits from the use of full color throughout.

InDesign Conference

200 mostly advanced InDesign users from across Australia and elsewhere, with a substantial influx from New Zealand, led by top experts and speakers (I almost said entertainers!) such as Sandee Cohen and Deke McClelland, led by David Blatner.

It had to work, and though in the weeks prior to this group's first overseas conference seemed to be at best somewhat chaotic, the event ran perfectly. One of the assistants to organizer Barry Anderson admitted however that it was like the proverbial duck -- smoothly moving ahead but with the feet paddlingmadly beneath the surface.

I gained a lot, not least from the very last session where Deke gave me an understanding of XML working with InDesign in about 10 minutes, after I've spent hours and hours over the last couple of years, on the Web and buying several books, without learning anything. This makes me think that many, many publicationsshould be thinking XML for automation.

I'll write more later, but suffice to say that this Eureka moment in itself made the conference worth the cost -- so much so that I could not bring myself to take up with Barry the little things like a receipt for payment which doesn't tally with the amount on my credit card statement.

Then add the other hints from Blatner and Cohen etc such as how to create a quick duotone with a grayscale pic from within InDesign, and, for those of us who like little things, what happens when you type "bounce" overthe About box, or create a new stroke style called "Happy" or "Feet".

And the Australian presenters such as software trainer Mike McHugh certainly held their own with the big guns.

What training to start a magazine?

How would you answer this question:

I am a college student and want to produce my own magazine one day and I'm trying to figure out should I major in jounalilsm or not. Currently my major is journalism with a certificate in entreprenuership. But my academic advisor said if I want to start a magazine, journalism wasn't for me. She told me that journalism is for writers.

I answered thus (but welcome other views):

What qualifications you seek depend on what aspect of running a magazine appeals to you most. The three sides are editorial, advertising, circulation and a qualification in journalism with some training in business as you seem to be doing would seem to me to be a good start.

However, I'm reminded of one of the directors of one of Britain's largest magazine publishers several years ago. He worked his way up from being a sales rep on a music paper in London to being one of those running a business with several hundred publications. But he started out as a merchant seaman -- with no qualifications at all -- and told me that he would pick the dirtiest, most rusty ships in port to sign on with, because they went to the most interesting places.

His training was basically in "life", and he was equally at home with the rock musicians as with the heads of the entertainment/electronics industry conglomerates.

Maybe that isn't for you, but I'd suggest that before starting your own magazine you should seek work with some of the down market magazines -- especially those which are short of both staff and money. You'll have to do everything, but as a result you'll learn how everything is done. It won't be financially rewarding, so you may want to also spend some time, if you can get it, in a job with one of the major groups and see how things are done at that end of the market.

You will be criticized if you take a junior, poorly paid job after a better paid one, but it is the way to really learn what can not be learned in college.

You should also read as much as possible -- books such as mine, and those by Cheryl Woodard and James Kobak (which we did not publish) but which we recommend on the Worsley Press website, as well as magazines of all kinds. Any spare time can be put into helping with some of the "zines".

Basically, you need to see the mistakes that others make so that you can try to avoid them, or at least have an idea of what to do when you do make them.

Comments?

The art of the simple idea

The big publications have designers, art directors, and several categories of editors which mean the cover or front page is the combined work of many people with many skills -- but on the small publication this often comes down to one person, one often overworked person.

So how do you develop a great cover idea which is going to sell on the newsstands?

There's a lot of rubbish written about this, so I was pleased today to come across a short article of simple steps by an expert from one of the major publishing desgn agencies - Jennifer George-Palilonis with Garcia.

Jennifer is still writing about the steps for a two or three person group, but it would apply equally where it is just one.

For example: "choose a single, powerful image to represent one of the key points, and then let a strong headline and summary explain other important facets of the story."

She adds: "Describe the story in 10 words or less and write it down. One of the best editor’s I know once told me if you can’t do this, your story has no focus."

The article is called Simple solutions to effective art direction

It is also worth looking at the rest of this site. For example, there's a comment from industry guru Ron Reason on reporters and photographers: "If all your story needs is a head shot of an aspiring politician, please ask his press agent for a handout photo of the guy. You might buy back an hour for your staff photographer, which will be better used to cover breaking news that has a truly interesting visual angle to it."

Now that timewasting for a head shot is something I've seen time and time again on newspapers, large and small.

Resize those graphics

I just received an email from one of this country's largest newspaper publishers, an HTML email with an embedded logo at the top. It is just as well that I'm on broadband, for though the HTML code shows that the senders nicely resized the logo to 450 pixels wide, the original JPEG was 2257 x 847 pixels -- nearly 20cm wide at 300dpi. It was an 8kb email with an embedded graphic of substantially over half a Megabyte. I pity those getting this email on a dialup connection. Most readers of this, being in the graphics business, would not make such a mistake, but some may like to check what happens after the office asks you for a copy of the logo being used in your publication so they can use it elsewhere.

Watch that graphic run-around

It usually looks good, and it has become almost universal in magazine covers -- the head which projects over part of the masthead. But it can cause trouble -- and the ultimate case has to be the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in Germany, which stresses under its title that it is "independent". Unfortunately a projection from a picture of Woody Allen caused the loss of a couple of letters which, as they would in English, changed the meaning from "independent" to "dependent". It was spotted too late, but the presses were stopped, trucks already on their way were ordered to turn round, and the whole issue of 60,000+ was pulped. The error was made worse because the newspaper was recently bought by a media group with links to a political party, so there were suggestions it might have been sabotage. Details

Perils of stock photography

Stock photography comes in very useful. We've used it on book covers (see the front page of our main web site at present, where both the top row books use several stock pictures). However, that use has generally been several pictures. What are the chances of setting up a new ad for a BIG client and finding that the people doing the ads for their main opposition pic the same model in the same setting and an almost-the-same shot? If you think it won't happen, have a look at the AdRant Blog where Dell and Gateway did just that. The banner ads were not around for long, but, having been captured, they are bound to be used in design and marketing courses around the world for decades to come.