Magazine Publishing

[Etienne]

In one of the more obvious faute de mieux decisions ever, I have just ended up as the editor of Korfball, the national magazine for British korfball.

It comes out 3 times a year, and is automatically delivered to every British regsitered korfballer - about 3000 people.

I have a pretty clear idea of the type of content I'd like, and I'm a decent writer/editor so I'm not concerned about that.

However, I have no experience at all with DTP software, magazine design, use of photographs etc, and I was hoping to tap into OTF's collective wisdom.

I've access to Microsoft Publisher (2003). Will that be sufficient or should I be looking to get some new stuff - my predecessor used Adobe InDesign. If so, what offers good value?

Any other tips, suggestions?

For reference purposes, this is a
previous edition of the magazine (PDF).

[WOM]

Magazine Publishing

Congrats, Josh. Editor's a nice title to have. I'd never heard of the game before this board, but it sounds fun. Good luck. I'm not a designer, so I'd be of little help. I write, but you've got that covered.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Magazine Publishing

Aha, my specialist subject!

You'll get good advice from proper designers like AoC, although I'm writing as an editor who lays out at a lot of my own stuff.

Do you have any other software at all other than MS Office? And do you have any typefaces besides the standard Windows selection? And what's your budget in terms of software and training?

You might find my website useful as well (www.theonemanpublisher.com), although it's admittedly biased towards QuarkXpress. (InDesign is equally good.)

I'll write something longer over the weekend.

[Andy C]

Magazine Publishing

I don't know MS Publisher, but if is in any way fit for its implied purpose I don't imagine that there's very much in the current layout that it can't achieve.

Whatever DTP software you end up using, do spend time to get to know it. DTP is not just super-duper word processing - there's a lot of new concepts that are important in the DTP world, and even where the functions of DTP and WP overlap there's a whole different set of priorities and emphases. So I'd do a dry run or two before you start, so that you can get a feel for the way you'll be working and what is possible with your system.

If you're planning to stamp your own identity on the publication with a bit of a redesign, spend a lot of time looking at other publications and train yourself to spot the design choices that other people have made and try to work out the reasons for them. Identify what you like and what you don't, and work out how it's done.

Don't forget the media that you're publishing to. As you've seen on here over the past couple of days, design choices such as font selection are very much influenced by factors such as whether the final copy will be read online. on paper or both. If you're printing to paper, the characteristics of the paper itself - whether it's glossy or not, for example - can have a big inluence on the layouot decisions.

Good luck, and enjoy it!

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

Andy, yes the response to the new site here (including my own!) has added a little frisson of terror to any thoughts of re-designing it.

Actually, I'm intending to keep the design broadly the same, most of my focus is going to be on improving the content.

The magazine comes out on glossy paper, as it's only format. If it does end up being online to, that will become someone else's problem.

Stumpy, I'll be doing this on my university computers and they do have quite a variety of general software available. But they don't appear to have QuarkXpress or InDesign or any other specific DTP software.

Budget is frankly as low as possible, neither me nor the BKA have much cash. Will check out your website.

[beak]

Magazine Publishing

3000 people in Britain play korfball? Who are they all??

[boris]

Magazine Publishing

The best budget DTP software is Serif's Page Plus, which has pretty much all the functionality of the more expensive ones, for about a tenth of the price.

[Twilight Johnny Atom]

Magazine Publishing

Would you use a tennis ball to play Korfball?

Don't use Publisher. Despite its name it's not suitable for publishing magazines. Your printer will hate you (or refuse to use the files).

There's a reason Quark and InDesign are ubiquitous in publishing.

My rates are very reasonable for magazine layout by the way...

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

boris, that does look ideal. Is that what you used for your U's fanzine?

dogbeak, the hotbed areas for UK korfball are Cambridge, Oxfordshire, Kent and London. I don't know if you're a resident geordie, but if you are, then your disbelief is understandable as there isn't a club between Leeds and Edinburgh.

3,000 people really isn't that many though!

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

TJA, you'd use a korfball to play korfball. But if that wasn't available, a football would probably be your best bet.

Unless "reasonable" = free or practically free, I think it's probably out of our budget!

[Stumpy Pepys]

Magazine Publishing

TWA -- I fully understand where you're coming from, but printing from MS Publisher can be done (I've done it once or twice) with a few hacks and workarounds. Don't forget a new copy of Quark or InDesign costs between £700 and £900.

There were some free CDs of Quark 5 doing the rounds a while back. That might be the best budget option if you can find one.

I think the issue you may have to contend with is the price of fonts. Etienne's PDF uses the Futura family as a headline font, which I know costs a bomb. I've never used free or pirated fonts, so I couldn't advise on that.

[Andy C]

Magazine Publishing

Can you not output from Publisher to PDF and supply that to the print shop?

[Stumpy Pepys]

Magazine Publishing

If you're really doing on the cheap, you could output a PostScript file from MS Publisher using the free driver from the Adobe website. Then give the printer that. He could then ouput a PDF for you to check.

Ideally, you'd want to make the PS file into a PDF yourself and send that, but then you'd have to buy Adobe Acrobat.

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

I've got Acrobat.

[boris]

Magazine Publishing

Etienne - yes, I used Page Plus for Rage Online, but only really explored a very small part of its functionality. I've also used it for much smaller projects. The later versions allow you to create pdfs for sending files to commercial printers etc.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Magazine Publishing

Okay, as promised:

The Stumpy Pepys guide to no-budget desktop publishing

Purists (possibly including myself) may baulk at this advice, but it should work fairly well. You have a big advantage in that you want to produce a black and white newsletter – if you were doing it in colour, I’d be much more sceptical about the following. Being able to output PDFs will help you as well.

DTP software
For a black and white job, MS Publisher is probably just about up to the job, as you don’t have to worry about separations. I know QuarkXpress pretty much backwards, but I don’t use 50% of the features as I’m not a designer.

The alternative, as I outlined in an earlier post, is to track down one of the free QuarkXpress 5.0 CDs that sometimes appear in computer magazines. I can’t comment on Boris’s endorsement of Serif Plus as I’ve never used it.

Photo software
Again, as you’re working in black and white, you don’t have to worry about more expensive software like Photoshop. Chances are you’ll only need to check the resolution of photos, do some cropping and convert colour images to black and white. You can do this with Microsoft Office Picture Manager. If you want something more sophisticated (for playing around with levels, contrast or doing cutouts), then I’d suggest downloading The Gimp, which is a free image editor. (The Gimp also doesn’t seem to be much use for colour repro as it works in RGB, but it’s fine for black and white.)

As you’re working in B&W, the other advantage is that what you see on your office printer will be reasonably close to what the final version looks like.

Output
Most printers won’t touch Publisher files with a bargepole. The workaround is to go to the Adobe website and download their generic PostScript printer driver. You can then save to PostScript from Publisher, then distil that to a PDF with Acrobat Distiller. Your printer will almost certainly be able to send you a file with his preferred settings for the job.

Having Adobe Acrobat is a big advantage because 1) You can see what your final file will look like, 2) PDFs are a lot smaller than PostScript files and you can easily email them.

I have spoken to printers who’ve had trouble with built-in PDF generators (including the one on QuarkXpress surprisingly) and they’ve all suggested using this method. It’s the one I use as well.

Fonts
This might be your sticking point and I’d welcome comments from the designers on the board. The PDF you linked to uses Aldine (which I haven’t heard of) and Futura (which is well known). However to buy proper licensed versions will cost you an arm and a leg.

If you’re doing this from a university computer, maybe someone as your university has such fonts, as the licenses do allow for multiple users. I’ve never used pirated fonts and I don’t know if they’re worth the risk.

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

Stumpy, that's awesome. Thanks a lot.

Couple of supplementaries

1) The font thing.

I'd kind of assumed that all fonts were basically common property, so I hadn't considered that at all. I assume I'd be fine if I stuck to the fonts that Word offers?

2) The colour thing

I had been considering having (just) the front cover in colour. What difference would that make. I have access to Photoshop, though I've never used it.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Magazine Publishing

You can do colour, although I wouldn't attempt anything ambitious. You will have to convert all your colour images to CMYK (which you can do on Photoshop). Photoshop is a wonderful package, but really not user friendly for the beginner. Worth investing in a good introductory guide.

There's nothing to stop you using Windows fonts. The issues are more around aesthetics than anything technical:

* The good thing with commercial fonts is that you can buy them in families with different weights. That's not an option with most of the standard Windows fonts
* Some of the Windows serif fonts aren't too bad--the better ones are Garamond, Goudy Old Style and Perpetua. The sans serif fonts however--which you'd probably want to use for headlines--are limited
* There is an issue in commercial printing when you apply the bold button (as opposed to using a heavier font in the font family)--one of the designers on the board might be able to explain why. The upshot is that it can output horribly. This will restrict your flexibility somewhat.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Magazine Publishing

Just to add a couple of points to Stumpy and TJA's comprehensive posts.

The very first thing to do is talk to your printer. Find out what kind of files he's used to and whether your existing application can supply them. If not can he suggest any work-arounds? Don't be intimidated, you're his client and its in his interest to help you out.

Forget about colour for the moment, Stumpy's right you don't need the headaches. Also, at the moment you have a single colour publication, adding a unit of full-colour is going to add to the production cost very significantly.

Find a designer. You can teach yourself to some extent as you go, but the process is going to be very time consuming and frustrating. You may be tech-savvy and able to learn your way around InDesign relatively quickly, but you still have to know how to apply what you've learned. I teach document design to people very much like yourself: writers who want to learn basic design skills. It's a two semester course section: four hours a week for eight months, plus a heavy project load. I suggest you put a call out through the magazine for someone with design and print-production experience. Failing that if there's a uni/college nearby with a graphic design program contact them to see if any students are interested in working with you. Emphasise the fact that there's no money but a lot of creative freedom. A twenty page mag that they've designed and produce for a year or so is a great portfolio piece for any grad. They should jump at the opportunity.

You say you have a copy of Adobe Acrobat, make sure it's Acrobat Distiller — which allows you to create PDF files — not just Acrobat Reader.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll have a blast.

[Aldo Simoncini]

Magazine Publishing

This may be pretty useless, but i've been editor of the University Magazine and a local Club's matchday programme, and found Publisher to be an amazingly versitile program. The trouble is with my Apple Mac being so difficult to find a similar program for.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Magazine Publishing

Some good points there from AoC.

I've been using QuarkXpress for ten years, though I'm still not fully confident enough in my layout abilities to design something like a newsletter from scratch. This is a full-colour newsletter I produce, but I got a designer to do the template for me.

If you haven't got Adobe Acrobat proper, you can still give the printer the PostScript file. Only problem is that they tend to be very large files -- the best you can hope for is to be able to upload it to the printer's FTP site.

[Furtho]

Magazine Publishing

PM for Stumpy - not about this, particularly, but otherwise how would you know? Cuh.

[boris]

Magazine Publishing

In addition to Page Plus, Serif also produce a budget photo editor, called Photo Plus, which again (for its price) has some very impressive features (indluding the ability to convert jpegs etc to CMYK) and is well worth shelling out for if you can't afford Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. In fact, the whole Serif catalogue is worth exploring for high-spec low-cost art/publishing software.

And no, I'm not on a commission.

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

Thanks again for all the help, I now feel (in about equal measure) much more knowledgeable and much less confident about it working out!

[Etienne]

Magazine Publishing

OK, follow-up query.

I managed to use the InDesign programme by going to our journalism school, and managed to produce a magazine I'm reasonably happy with. However, I sent it to the printers as a PDF file (which is what they prefer) and got a reply asking me to embed the fonts.

And I can't see how this should be done - and the googling for help I've done seems to be telling me it should all be done automatically.

Any ideas?

Incidentally, I'd be happy to send anyone who's interested a PDF copy of the magazine as thanks for their help, though I can't imagine anyone really would be that bothered!