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This project has been all about looking in to the areas of design that interest us. As a collective we decided to enquire into designers methods and processes within editorial design. We wanted to find out more about their personal approaches and ways of working, rather than trying to get a general overview of everything within this vast industry. A lot went in to researching who we were going to contact, but we decided to focus on smaller more independent magazines and zines. We felt that by focusing on this specific area of editorial design we were likely to receive more personal responses opposed to generic commercial replies. For us this project seemed like a lot more than simply finding out about how an industry worked. We wanted to know about the people behind it. We wanted to speak to the people who created the work, not those who simply directed it.
This publication has been produced to catalogue our findings as well as the processess we have been through ourselves.
OST IS REIOUS.
CRACK THE WORD NOM DE STRIP WAX OWT ZINES by OCTAGON BONESHAKER LIONHEART PRINTED PAGES HUCK ANORAK INDIE FERSHER EYE ARTICLE WORKS THREAD DONT PANIC ART LICKS WHITE FUNGUS NEVERTHELESS RADIUS PROCESS JOURNAL
We wanted the whole process to be a lot more personal, we wanted to engage with the designers we contacted not just send them faceless emails. By producing something physical to send them we were able to show our genuine interest in the designers and the work they produce.
We collectively produced and put together a small package to send out, containing a brief introduction to the project and ourselves, a small questionnaire for the individual to fill out and a stamp and address for them to return the filled out information. Each package was personalised with the attachment of a small name slip which directly and personally addressed the persons we wanted to engage with and talk to. In total we produced and sent out 10 of these packs to companies across the whole of the UK from Manchester to London.
POS PRE CIOU
1.Tell us about your job in one sentence using the word PEANUT. After I liberally apply peanut butter to my freshly baked sourdough loaf, i settle down to help curate and gather content for boneshaker magazine - an ink on paper sort of magazine that celebrates the people that choose to ride bicycles. 2. What skills and attributes help you do your job? Patience, passion, organisation and on occasion, a way with words. 3. Besides your job what other creative outputs do you have? Are you an amateur photographer? No I’m not an amateur photographer, but i do make a little music and sound design for short documentaries and films. I also build a mean stone wall.
EDITORIAL DESIGNERS ARE HARD TO GET HOLD OF.
ITS VERY UNGLAMOUROUS Hi there Sophie, text document attached with completed questions. we put boneshaker together around our kitchen tables, so there’s no office as such. all very unglamorous i’m afraid. cheers for now! James
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O Q1: Tell us about your job in one sentence using the word Lemon I do design and typesetting for DW magazine, it has absolutely nothing to do with lemons (sorry!). Q2: What skills and attributes help you do your job? I work in Indesign for each issue, you need a keen eye for detail as a typesetter, as it’s not just the editor’s responsibility to pick up on typos - it’s yours too. That’s definitely something that has improved hugely since the first issue, you’ll find lots of errors in that one, but since then Tiffany (the editor) and I have gotten a lot stricter with double, triple and quadruple checking everything. That’s something that also transfers into freelance work - whether you’re just doing design or not- because clients often won’t accept a typo as their fault if it’s gone to print already, so it’s always best to check everything even when it’s strictly not your responsibility. Patience is also a key thing for all the work I do, sometimes as the designer you don’t get to make the final call on the colour, layout etc which took me a little while to get used to. Every client your working for is paying you to create something they like, whether or not that includes comic sans (although it’s always worth trying to politely persuade them otherwise). It’s annoying when you’re starting out and you get a few clients with awful design taste as you don’t really want to put it in your portfolio, but I’ve found a way around that is to show the development work rather than the final product, if it’s something you’re not too pleased with. Q3: What process do you go through before designing a new issue? DW is done on a pretty tight budget. Tiffany started out running it as a zine printed in black and white, made in Microsoft Publisher for a few years, then she got funding from the Princes Trust (who are awesome by the way, if you ever need funding, give them a try) to turn it into a business. This meant that everything had to be done on a small budget so that the magazine could afford to keep going if it had a few months of trouble trying to get advertisers, as a sort of backup. The design was done in a way that I was given a one off fee for creating something that would be very easy to adapt for each issue -which is why you’ll notice parts of it feel a little bit like a book- to save us time and money. So now essentially what happens is this: Tiffany sends through a dropbox folder with every page of content in individual word files (jpegs separate) and I go through and drop them in the right place in our indesign template. Then there’s a small amount of wriggling things around, but all Tiffany’s writers, write to a very specific word count which means mostly everything fits fine. Then once I’ve done all that, I check it, then I send the first draft to Tiffany as a PDF. If she spots anything she sends me back a list of corrections and we keep doing that until we don’t find anything! Throughout the whole process I do drink a huge amount of tea, I think 15 cups in one day is my record, and I’ve recently got a teeny tiny kitten so I’ve had to learn to design with only one arm as she likes to be held all day. Q4: Besides your job what other creative outputs do you have? I often complain to my parents that sometimes no matter what I do it feels like work.. If I do some photography, or an illustration i’m immediately thinking about how I could expand it into a larger project, where I could try and sell it etc so I tend to not do anything hugely creative that isn’t work (which to be honest just means I spend like 98% of my time working! It’s all so addictive..) But when I’m not working I’m reading, in a big way. I recently did an internship at Little, Brown who are quite a large publishing house, they gave me about 20 free books and I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited.
Emma Hardy
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BEER AND BRAINSTORMS 1. Tell us about your job in one sentence using the word ROBOT. 2. What skills and attributes help you do your job? 3. Besides your job what other creative outputs do you have? 4. What process do you go through before designing a new issue?
1. Robots have dominated, the human race eliminated and yet PAPER still strives to craft the beautiful, surreal and spectacular work of talented emerging artbots. 2.As we work across the creative industries, having design rules and styles, help us to make PAPER a fluid piece of art in itself. Being surrounded with fresh talented artwork, helps us keep the publication fresh and inspirational. 3.I studied Architecture for 6 years and make short films for fun. 4.Beer and brainstorms, lots of them (Brainstorms that is). Each issue has it’s own theme, so we need to push the limits of each theme idea to make sure that we are appealing to a wide audience with diverse work.
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