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#workpipeline
Especially in the case of a magazine/ newspaper where working quickly is a necessity, only a design that facilitates the speed of working rather than hampering it, can be called successful.
FLOW OF WORK AT A MAGAZINE In addition to understanding the content and the market position of the publication, I recognized the need to understand a typical monthly work cycle at the magazine office. Especially in the case of a magazine/ newspaper where working quickly is a necessity, only a design that facilitates the speed of working rather than hampering it, can be called successful. While the primacy of content over design is a given, it was crucial to verify the hierarchy of editorial preferences in order to define the limits within which the design team operates. The deadlines often decide how much time and effort goes into a piece and hence it was important to understand what comes in when. As shown in the flow chart in the facing page, each month at the magazine office sees a very typical production timeline. Taking an average month of 30 days as an example, the work on the next issue usually starts around the second week of each month. The period between the 7th to the 22nd of each month is known as the ‘production week’ (even though its is technically a fortnight).
Redesigning The Caravan Magazine
Hopping on The Caravan
In the first week of every month, before the production starts, the designers are usually handling outside jobs such as designing selfads, posters for events jointly organized by The Caravan and its sponsors etc. The magazine is divided in three broad sections namely the Front of the Book (FoB), Well and Back of the Book (BoB). While both FoB and BoB contain smaller and lighter articles, the well of the magazine is the most content intensive part and carries the cover story and the reportage pieces. From the second week onwards, the first drafts for the articles start flowing in. The first ones to come-in are usually shorter pieces for the FoB and BoB sections of the magazine as well as commissioned pieces such as the photo essay, book reviews etc. The position and selection of ads is also decided at this point. The Well of the magazine, which is the most meaty section of the magazine usually comes in at the end. One of the main reasons for this is the nature of reportage pieces. In case of The Caravan, most of the well pieces are political
profiles, which need to be edited carefully due to the sensitivity of the issues written about. Sometimes, while running the profiles of influential people who are currently in power, it takes the editors very long to get a legal clean chit. This is essential to safeguard the freedom of speech of the press.
the final edited copy, popularly known as the ‘good-to-go’ or ‘GTG’ version at The Caravan.
The copy editors first hand over a rough draft of the story to the designers. In the meanwhile, the editors also sit with the photo editors to select the photographs for the story. Once the designers have received both the draft and photographs for a particular story, they start laying out the content in the design. At this point the designer only places pull-quotes with dummy text. A PDF of this is sent back to the editor for revision. Technical issues such as widows, orphans, word-count etc are ironed out during this stage. However, sometimes based on urgency sometimes the editors takes a call to ignore these issue and not alter the text.
The editorial team, along with the writer of the cover story, the photo editor and the art director, deliberate on the content of the cover page. Based on the cover story as well as the quality of all the related images available, they conceptualize and visualize the cover. At The Caravan, it is usually the art director who takes care of the final execution of the cover-page. Quite often the cover imagery is illustrated. In addition to this, the final design files are passed through the art director for a final look.
The editor/ writer then replaces the dummy text from the pull-quotes and photo captions and sends the PDF back to the designers. Along with this they also send a text file of
With these the designers then prepare the final design files that can be sent for pre-press. All page elements are placed and frozen at this stage and are not subject to further change.
The last week of the month is spent at the printing press. Here the magazines are fleshed out and the freshly printed magazines are delivered in time to the various news stands in time for the next month.