Some details about our staff..
We are a group of 4/5 volunteers, but often our readers can write their own article draft and send it to us for revision and publishing on the next come out. We receive both handwritten and digital texts.
We obtain photos from people: often I ask who has taken some pictures for instance during a public event. The quality is often low (I usually try to edit a bit with GIMP), but we have no alternatives: we haven't a pro photographer. Sometimes a pro photographer our friend send us his photos.
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As regard the magazine format, it is A4.
We turn to a little shop who print through an "offset", black and white only. I think it is rare for just 300 copies and probably they usually print simpler projects than our magazine.
The result it's ok for the text, but not so good for images. On the other hand the price is very very cheap, if we printed at other shops using digital grey scale printing we would have spent more than the double.
I'd like to obtain a better result especially for images, I always notice some copy darker and some other clearer with low ink... Not good at all: the "good" result I saw on my monitor screen... It is missed on the printed paper due to the low print quality...
For that price we couldn't ask more after all.
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The readers are all the people of our village, almost everyone receives the magazine. They are "unsorted", young, old etc...
Our magazine has also historical purpose, our readers usually collect all numbers come out. It reports the "history", voices, events, issues, ideas for the future and so on, all related to our small village...
You mentioned the articles length, but usually it is decided by the authors, we have both very short texts and very long ones. I use to adapt the pages layout so that images and text take up 22 pages and when I exceed them I have to fill in 26. Due to the print method on A3 sheets on which are impressed 4 pages (2 A4 pages on a face and 2 on the other face). Moreover we provided the shop with the pre-printed A3 cover and back that contains its internal face empty (page 1 and last page).
So I have to fill (2 + 4*N) pages, "N" depends on the articles length and number, how many photos are sent to the staff and so on... Hope to be clear in my explanation (excuse my poor English!).
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If the print result and the photos quality were better, I'd like to use images more extensively, for example:
https://fliss93.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/original_328412_l56zkq7cafxsmjmio_frjb54p.jpgOn the left you can see the whole page image, but if that photo didn't have no high quality the result wouldn't be so good. In my case just few photos have enough definition to be placed so big...
I'd also like to have a less rigorous system of margins. The guy who dealt with magazine layout before me used to use ms publisher and chose a book sytle margins. I now feel the need of a much free way to manage the space: in some cases near a big bold title would be interesting a big image laid beyond the mergins. Also a "panoramic" image placed on both the pages would be an interesting idea, and it request at least to cross the internal margins. Look at this for example:
http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/2/73685/896414/Magazine%20Layout-3.jpg Thank you for your links!
I also found some book for learning a bit more in depth graphic design and communication "rules".
For example I read about Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris books.
I also found something on video from lynda project, they have also lessons of graphic and editorial design. Something is based on indesign, but the most of theory is useful regardless.
If you or any other user have more suggests or comments I'll happy to read!
Bye!