Magazine Production Process

Content At the beginning of the production cycle of a current issue an editorial team will often get together to decide what will be covered in the following issue (sometimes the following two issues). The brainstorming meeting is a forum for new ideas but is also a place where the editor can inform the editorial staff of changes to format, extent or placement of regular items. Many magazines feature articles about topics they have covered in previous issues. They do so in a cyclical way perhaps every year, 18 months or 24 months. This is because the repeated topics are particularly relevant to their target market and there is an opportunity to include new developments. Regularly featuring key topics increases the likelihood of enticing new readers. The editor has to be careful to keep the balance between old and new to keep longstanding readers happy too. Once the focus of the particular edition and the topics to be covered are decided, the editor can then meet with the art director and/or commission an illustrator or photographer to work on imagery for the front cover. The main front cover image needs to be striking and symbolic of the issues main theme. Sometimes imagery for features and news pieces will be discussed, however, it is often the writer of an article who sources the imagery to go with it. They are most familiar with the pertinent issues that need illustrating. Flat Planning If the magazine does not feature advertising the editor then produces a flat plan. The flat plan is a single sheet of paper with little pages drawn on it in sequence. The editor uses this to mark up which page an article will be on and its position on the page. Sections of pages may be outlined with different coloured marker pens so that complete sections can be sent down to the print shop when complete. If the magazine does feature advertising the editor may have to hold off on flat planning until the ad (advertising) sales manager can give them an idea of how many pages of ad space have been sold and where they fall in the edition. There is normally some haggling to be done between editor and ad sales manager
Copyright City University 2002. Please do not redistribute. For student use only. 1

about movement of features in favour of adverts. This is because the ad sales team are soliciting adverts and negotiating on placement and costs at the same time as the editorial and/or typesetting staff are laying out the pages. Any movement of articles from left-hand pages to right-hand pages (or vice versa) for replacement by an advert means additional work for the staff laying out the pages. The flat plan is often stuck on a wall and, as articles or adverts are supplied, the editor will mark them off as supplied by ringing them with a highlighter pen. Once an article has been sub-edited and revised a single diagonal stroke will be put through the article name on the flat plan. When the same article has been received a final proof read and has had corrections taken in, a diagonal stroke with be drawn across its name on the flat plan to create a cross. Commissioning After the editorial meeting the editor will also commission any external writers. If the topic is of a specialist nature, external writers with a track record in the field may be engaged instead of in-house staff writers. Research and Writing What follows is a frenzy of research and copy writing. The editorial staff phone around contacts, arrange meetings with interviewees and often do background topic research using the internet and any online subscriber news databases they have (eg Reuters Textline). Often they will do background research specific to a particular interview or press conference before they attend. Members of an editorial team usually take it in turns to do post duty. This involves sifting through post sent to the editorial office by marketing managers, agents and PR agencies and sorting it into useful items, potentially useable items and rubbish. Invariably it is mostly rubbish. PR agencies will send the same press releases a number of times and some dont even bother to check which topics are normally featured in your magazine. Sub-editing Depending on the publication, sub-editing can take place before page layout or during page layout. The editor or sub-editor, if there is one, will act in the interests of quality control and query any loose ends, ambiguous text or items that may not be clear to the reader. Once they have read an article they will cut it down to a size to fill the space available or ask the person who wrote it to cut down or re-write certain parts to clarify them or bring them into house style. If the article runs too short they will ask the writer to fill it out.

Copyright City University 2002. Please do not redistribute. For student use only.

Production When most of the articles have been written, the editorial staff and/or dedicated layout staff typeset or lay out the pages using Quark XPress, Pagemaker or InDesign. Often the layout team, under the direction of the art director, focus on setting advert pages while the editorial team, under the direction of the editor, lay out the article pages. This saves time because the writers of the articles dont have to spend time passing their text on to someone else to do the layout. Difficult or complex articles to lay out are usually given to the art director to arrange a suitable layout treatment. Most publications staff do not typeset pages from scratch, they use pre-made templates created by the art/layout department or use a copy of the page layout file for an old edition and paste new text over old articles. Similarly they can drop new pictures into existing picture boxes. Normally keyboard shortcuts are set up in the DTP document or template, so putting the text into the correct font and size is a simple matter of highlighting the text and selecting the correct stylesheet from a floating palette on the screen or pressing a single key (or pair of keys) on the keyboard. Proof Reading As laid out pages are completed, members of the editorial department will print them off and give them to the other members for proof reading. Next, they will mark up all the corrections onto one consolidated sheet and take in the corrections on the DTP file. Once the corrections are taken in, an article will be printed out again for a second round of proof reading by the editorial department and any corrections previously missed will be incorporated into the publication. Once a section of pages is complete and has been checked for errors it is sent via ISDN (high-speed leased telecommunications line) or e-mailed across a broadband internet connection to the printers. If these facilities are not available it is copied onto CD, Syquest disk or Zip disk and biked to the print company producing the magazine. If there are photographs that the print company needs to scan these are normally sent in advance and marked with the crop and size required and where in the publication they are to be featured. Checking Printers Proofs When a section is sent to the printers they will generate and send back a printers proof of the pages to the editor (and art director) for checking. Some editors prefer to see the films rather than a printers proof for checking. Quite often mistakes will be allowed to go through unless they are truly horrendous because of the tight deadlines involved in magazine production.

Copyright City University 2002. Please do not redistribute. For student use only.

Distribution Once the proofs have been approved, the printers print, finish and package the publication. They then send it to the warehouse, ready for distribution. The publications is finally distributed and sold.

Copyright City University 2002. Please do not redistribute. For student use only.