Comprehensive Guide to the Publishing Process

Contents

• Communication vs. Publication
• Planning Your Publication
• Editorial Basics
• Graphic Design Basics
• Printing

The following information is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the publishing process, but is designed to give you a basic understanding of publishing processes and terminology to help you in working with professional editors, writers, graphic designers, and printers.

Communication vs. Publication

Effective publications can make a significant contribution to the success of a program or department, but publications are not the only method that can be used to convey your message. When conducting a publications needs assessment, keep an open mind and remember that your goal is to decide on the most effective way to communicate your message -- which may not mean producing a publication. Think communication, not publication.

Questions to ask yourself
No form of communication is effective without a clearly defined purpose. You must develop a clear, specific vision of what you intend to accomplish at the beginning of the communication process.

Do you wish to: define, educate, enforce, inform, instruct, notify, praise, promote, raise funds, or recruit? What is the response you want from your intended audience?

What is your message? Convey the single most important idea you are trying to get across in a single sentence.

Who is your audience? Redouble your market research efforts. The more you know about your audience, the more effective and targeted your publication will be.

Also, how does your purpose bolster your department's mission? Would it be detrimental to the department and its programs if the message did not reach the audience?

According to some sources, printed matter falls third or fourth in effectiveness behind person-to-person contacts, personal letters, telephone calls, and electronic media. A well-written, single-page letter can often do a better job than a small brochure because it helps establish a personal contact between the sender and the recipient.

Are there other means of communication more appropriate to your audience and your message, such as radio ads, television ads, newspaper ads, videos, presentations, letters, e-mail, meetings, lectures, person-to-person contact, or simply a phone call?

If you need a publication, what form should it take? Poster? Brochure? Newsletter? Annual Report? (Newsletters of more than 8 pages are seldom read.)

And finally, do you have the resources? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? Can you justify the cost, given other demands on agency resources? Do you have the trained personnel? Will the end result be worth the cost?

Planning Your Publication

OK, you have decided to do a publication. Early planning is critical in producing an attractive, cost-effective, and accurate publication, whether it is a printed piece or published on the World Wide Web.

Begin by asking the following Top 10 questions:

1. Who is the intended audience?
2. What are the likes and dislikes of that audience?
3. What information do you want to provide to them?
4. What kind of response do you want from the audience? A request for more information? A donation? Or just awareness?
5. How are you going to get the audience’s attention? How are you going to stand out from the competition?
6. What is your competition doing?
7. How are you going to measure the publication’s success?
8. What is the budget for the publication, including mailing and distribution fees?
9. How are you going to get the publication in the hands of the intended audience? How good is your mailing list?
10. When do you need the publication produced and distributed?

Answering these questions will help you define the breadth and scope of the publication and will get you thinking about time schedules early in the process. Providing answers to these questions should also assist your designer in putting together a look and feel of the publication that is attractive to the intended audience.

NOTE: How well you know the intended audience will greatly determine how effective your publication will be. Your own personal tastes are often not those of the intended audience. Communicating with 17-year-old prospective students is much different than communicating with CEOs of major corporations.

Editorial Basics

Most often, photography, design, and page production cannot begin until the copy has been finalized. Making editorial changes during page production can cause extreme delays in the completion of the project. Changes during the blueline stage, a stage in which film has been processed by the printer, also delays a project and adds much to the cost.

Good writing requires -- as does good graphic design -- talent, training, experience, and a firm knowledge of your audience. There is really no substitute for having a professional editor, writer, and designer on your project.

Often, however, you will be required to write at least a draft of the copy that will be edited by a professional editor. Keep the following in mind.

1. Less is more. In today’s information saturated world, you will lose readers with large chunks of text that include long paragraphs and rambling sentences. There is a saying: "I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time." Concise writing takes time and effort. After you have written a draft, go back and cut out unnecessary paragraphs, sentences, and words. Then go back and cut out unnecessary sentences. Then go back and cut out unnecessary words. Repeat the procedure until you have shortened the copy to the point that nothing else can be cut without losing important information that you want to convey.
2. Good organization. Write using the inverted pyramid model in which the important information comes first and less important elements come last.
3. Spend time and effort on the first paragraph so that it grabs the reader’s interest and gives them a good idea of what to expect in the remaining text. Make sure that your No. 1 message is being conveyed.
4. Use telling detail. Rather then stating that your program is the best since slice bread, state real facts that demonstrate it. Readers are turned off by hyperbole.
5. Write to express, not to impress. Big words and vernacular are turnoffs.
6. Headlines, subheads, and photo captions are the most important text on a page. Take extreme care in writing them.

Graphic Design Basics

The basic elements of design are balance, proportion, direction, unity, and emphasis.

1. Balance: When a page is balanced, it appears stable, and you can look at the page without the eyes feeling agitated. On a balanced page your eyes will move fluidly from one element to the other.
2. Proportion: The relationship between differently sized elements on a page is called proportion. Varying proportions creates optical rhythm and adds interest and emphasis to a design.
3. Direction: Good design leads the reader’s eyes through the information from important information to less important information. The eye typically moves from left to right and top to bottom and from larger elements to smaller elements.
   Unity: Unity holds elements of design together and strengthens the intensity of the message and makes the reader feel comfortable as they move from one page to another.
4. Emphasis: To capture a reader’s interest you must draw him/her to a visual element that is more obvious than the other elements. The challenge is to do this without breaking the unity, balance, and proportion of the page.

Publication Sizes
Unique sizes are generally not cost-effective -- they waste paper and can make folding or binding difficult and expensive. There are standard sizes for newsletters, brochures, and catalogs, which, if used, will help reduce paper waste and contribute to cost-effective publications. Sizes are always stated in inches, with width first and length second. Knowing this can help avoid cost overruns or misunderstandings with your printer.

Brochures

12" x 9" folded to 4" x 9"
11" x 8 1/2" folded to 3 5/8" x 8 1/2"

Catalogs

6" x 9" and 8 1/2" x 11" (most cost-effective)
4" x 9"; 7" x 10"; and 9" x 12" (can also be printed)

Tabloids/Newsletters

8 1/2" x 11"
9" x 12"
11" x 15"
11 1/4" x 14"

When stating measurements outside the typed page, such as the dimension of a catalog or report, inches are used. Sizes inside the typed page and those used with type specifications are usually measured in points and picas. Twelve points make one pica and one pica is approximately one-sixth of an inch. "Pica rulers" can be bought at local art supply stores.

Typography

Typefaces produce different effects and should be chosen with the overall design in mind. The Council for the Support and Advancement of Education (CASE) asked five design experts to choose 20 typefaces from a list of more than one hundred. The top four textfaces they agreed upon were: Garamond, Baskerville, Times Roman, and
Helvetica. The top three display faces were: Helvetica, Albertus, and Baskerville.

The advent of desktop publishing has produced a huge number of machine fonts, many of which bear no relationship to the original foundry types cut for the typeface. Avoid nonstandard fonts unless you are attempting to create an effect appropriate to that font.

Body type tends to be easier to read when set in a serif typeface, one with short, light lines projecting from the main strokes of the letters, such as Times Roman. A sans serif typeface, one without serifs, such as Helvetica, is appropriate for display type, or large-sized type, but is harder to read at smaller sizes.

Most type is available in a variety of styles, including regular type (roman), boldface, italics, and boldface italics, as well as some lightface styles.

Line Length

The length of lines used must be indicated, and is measured in "picas." Use narrower line widths for small type and expand the line widths for large type. As a general rule, less than 11 picas and more than 25 picas wide is difficult to read.

Printing

Number of copies
Determine early in your planning how many copies of a publication you need by determining the size of your audience. For example, there are 2,700 teaching faculty at the university, and 3,300 classified state employees. There are about 26,000 students in degree programs, of whom about 5,800 are graduate students. If you are producing a publication for alumni, there are currently 160,000 alumni. The alumni database can be broken down by class year, majors, colleges, and departments.

The unit costs of printing decline as the quantity increases, in part because set-up costs account for a high percentage of the printing job cost. Once the set-up is paid for, running the press for a longer period continues to add to the cost, but becomes cheaper per unit. With many kinds of printing jobs, the cost differential between 500 and 1,000 copies, for example, is negligible.

Number of pages
Publications such as catalogs and books are printed in page units of 8, 16, and 32 (called signatures). These full pages of 8, 16, or 32 are folded and cut down to trim size. Consequently, unless you use multiples of 8, you will have blank pages and wasted paper.

The four pages that make up the cover of a publication is often on a different stock paper and not included in the count of the "inside" pages.

Paper Selection
In the same way that typefaces affect the look of a publication, so do the text and cover papers, the most visible and tangible part of a publication.

Papers vary widely in quality, color, texture, and cost. Unless you have a special need for a particular kind of paper, ask your printer about paper already in stock at the print shop. Print shops order papers in bulk at reduced prices, and they are almost always lower in cost than you would get from an individualized paper order. Considering that paper costs have risen markedly in the last few years, this can represent a significant savings.

You should also consider the use of recycled paper. Most printers now offer high-quality recycled papers at competitive prices. The "post-consumer content" of a paper is the percentage of waste paper included that is not generated by the paper manufacturer. The higher the "post-consumer content," the better.

Papers are specified by their basis weight in pounds of a ream (500 sheets). "Standard" text papers range in weight from 50 to 70 pounds. The heavier the paper, the higher the cost. Work with your printer from the beginning of your project on paper selection. The kind and grade of paper you select will affect not only the cost, but also the folding, binding, and posting options.

Ink Colors
Ink colors, including even standard black, must be included in your specifications. Ink colors are often forgotten in ordering materials for publications, but, if used well, can make a dramatic impact on your publication.

Ink colors are specified according to various color guides that identify thousands of colors. Some of these guides include PANTONE, DIC, and MUNSELL.

The Pantone Matching System (PMS) identifies each color by a number and provides samples, or swatches, of the color on coated and uncoated paper. For example, Virginia Tech's official school colors are: Burnt orange (PMS 158) and Chicago maroon (PMS 208).

Your printer will show you a "swatch book" of PMS ink colors or you can buy one at an art supply house. Take the time to determine the best color(s) for your publications -- after all, there are more than one hundred shades of blue, so do not just order "blue."

Ink colors must contrast enough with the paper color to make the material readable without straining the eye.

Folding and Binding
Your printing specifications should also include instructions on folding and binding. Do you want a brochure folded twice, so there are three panels? Do you want a catalog stapled? Once? Twice? Again, check with your printer for the best options.

Cost Estimates
Give your printer an idea of the budget you have established for your publication. You should have some idea of what you want and not ask the printer to quote on too many variables.

Once you have decided on quantity, paper stock, number of colors, and number of photographs, get a quote in writing based on your exact and full specifications.

Your printer can also help you estimate costs so you can propose a budget for funding approval. Printing specifications can be modified to bring a job closer in line with your budget. For example, to save money on a publication, you can: substitute a lower paper grade; reduce the size of the type to produce fewer total pages; or reduce the number of ink colors.

Unit cost
Publications costs are often referred to in terms of the unit cost, which is the total cost of the publication's production (but usually not including distribution or mailing costs) divided by the number of copies produced.

Making corrections
Making corrections throughout the production of page layouts can cause delays and increased cost to a project. However, once the electronic mechanicals to a service bureau or printer for output as film, corrections become extremely costly. The film is used to "burn" the plates that will go on the press.

Before the plates are burned, however, the printer will provide you with a blueline which is produced from the film. You should review the blueline carefully, looking for:

1. incorrectly cropped photos
2. improperly placed photos
3. incorrect arrangement of pages -- including front and back matter
4. blotches in the film; glitches in the type
5. dropped type items such as running heads and page numbers (folios).

Again, any changes (such as correcting misspellings) made at this stage are not only very expensive but could delay the prepress work and make you miss your scheduled press date.

Once the blueline has been approved by you, the printer will print the publication, fold it, and bind it.

Post-Publication Evaluation
When you receive your publications from the printer, open each box and conduct a spot check to see that the printing, binding, and, packaging are done to your specifications.

Make a general count of the number of pieces delivered and refer to it when your invoice arrives. Printers often print an overrun in order to allow for some spoilage during the printing process. The industry standard is 10 percent above or below the ordered print run.