May 16, 2009
Magazine Writing and Design
Filed Under Blogging, Print, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Last Thursday, May 15, I visited Jamie Malanowski‘s Marymount Manhattan class Writing for Magazines. Jamie was my editor in the Notebook section of Time magazine for two years and he asked me to share my ideas (and war stories) about the relationship between designer, editor and writer. I had never done this before, nor had I heard of any design peers talking to editorial journalism classes. It is a great topic and shows (once again) Jamie’s originality and insight.
I talked about the shared goals and the dynamics of the art director/editor relationship. There was good discussion about using design, photography and illustration to make the page inviting, engage the reader and maximize the impact of the article.
One reason I am posting now is to add some thoughts I had about this subject, post class discussion . One book I thought the class might want to look at is Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, by Ellen Lupton (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004).
Another is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. This might be of less practical interest to writers but as it is a typographic bible, written by a poet-turned-designer, I am mentioning here. I learned a lot from his thoughtful approach to reading words and how they should be used on a “page.” His basis is the spoken word. Now there is also The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.
I wish I had asked how many in the class have blogs? Besides the obvious educational benefits to them as magazine writers, I think this is a perfect opportunity for them to deal with their words and design.
I also believe they should all be photographers and even know how to shoot video. That would have been a lively discussion.
This is a good place for me to archive links to relevant topics about magazines and journalism. I will start with these:
Bill Moyers: Buying the War
Bill Moyers: Stopping the Presses; David Simon
NYTimes: Online Publisher scribd.com
March 16, 2008
Keepin’ it Real
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I have a lot to learn about WordPress. I may use blog and WordPress (WP) interchangeably because WordPress is the OpenSource blog software that I am using. I first put it on Kurt Andersen’s site and then Jamie Malanowski’s. But when Margaret Roach asked me to make three blogs for her, I knew I would be scaling the learning curve. Fortunately Margaret has done her homework and has a network of friends who are also into WP.
I put a blog here about four years ago using Blogger, the software that is now distributed by Google. But this week I finally loaded WP to use this a place to write about my commercial work and share my web learning experience. And right now that is about blogging.
My goal is to set up sites for clients that they can control the content from their computer. I have been doing that by using Adobe Contribute software. But I think WordPress will prove to be a worthy content management system (CMS).
March 13, 2008
Funny Title Goes Here
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What will be the tag line for the Spitzer Downfall? It needs a title or a Seinfeld catagory, because this has strangers talking to each other in Manhattan. Each year there are only one or two events that reach that level of buzz. Today I was in the hardware store looking for some halogen bulbs when I heard the manager answer the phone, “Eliot Spitzer’s office, he can’t come to the phone right now.” All three customers started laughing and shared their opinions as they checked out. It was the manager’s opinion that since his mother-in-law had forgiven him, he didn’t need to resign. I agreed.
Hello world!
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This is a Thumbnail without a caption and note in the html view where the text starts after the /close anchor tag. The margin on the right is formated by WP not in the Advanced Image Settings: no horizontal pixels added. Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
BURST at MoMA caption
BURST at MoMA caption
This is a Thumbnail with a caption. It wraps fine in the WP Visual Mode but note in the HTML Mode where the body text starts after the /close caption tag. The margin on the right is formated by WP not in the Advanced Image Settings: no horizontal pixels added. Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging! Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
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Field Report
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Kenneth's bookshelf: read
Berger wrote this while Picasso was still alive. Quite interesting to read why this Marxist critic thinks the communist artist failed.
First in the trilogy and my favorite. He reminds me of Louise Ehrdrich. I wrote and told him so.
