Help me with this Birthday Magazine idea?

[acearchie]

First of all thanks for at least clicking on this! From the thread title you have clicked hoping to be able to offer some help! Thanks for that!

For my friend for her birthday I have bought her the Vogue (magazine) from the month and year of her birth.

I am attempting to create an article filled with messages and pictures from all her friends that I aim to “slip into” the magazine as though it came off the original print run.

I have access to both photoshop and illustrator and reckon I will be able to do the basic layout and text organising within those. The magazine is over 19 years old so the layout is fairly basic and should be easy to replicate for my “fake” section.

I then aim to try and get it printed on, or as similar to, magazine paper as I can.

Does anyone have any tips for the layout? I will probably be creating a 6-8 page insert and this will be my first venture into layout design so any help would be great.

Does anyone have any tips on the printing? Do I go to a company and get a quote or is there a type of paper I can get that is close to magazine quality? I would need to print double sided to so that would have to be taken into account.

Basically any information that may help would be useful as google isn’t being as useful as normal for this project!

Thanks

 

[MacDawg]

Sounds like a very nice idea, and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated
Good luck! It will be a lot of work, but well worth it

 

[Messy]

Should be quite easy to find out the Magazines publisher, I don't think it'd be unreasonable to assume you could contact them to ask the type of paper its printed on, and (althought a little less likely) if its possible for you to arrange for them to print something for you.

With regards to the layout etc, im sure the issue you have bought has some articles, i'd suggest finding one, and doing your own twist on it.

Wikipedia gives you a list of editors throughout the years, many with links to their own personal information and what they're now currently doing. Depending on how serious you really want to get with this, you could attempt to contact them.

Lots of resources available if you have a good search, most of them are staring you in the face in the very magazine you hold.

Good idea.

 

[graphicsward]

That is a great idea, one i think i might use sometime..

It shouldn't be too hard to look through the magazine and copy the layout and styles. Just look closely and do the same.

An easy way to get it done is head to a local printer and ask for samples, they might have something like it.

Post your results here and i'm sure everyone will be happy to give feedback helping you make it perfect.

cheers,



graphicsward

 

[BJMRamage]

For printing this: I would find a local (or several) printers and take the magazine. ask what they think the paper is and if they have this on hand and that you'd probably want a Digital Press for it (rather than Offset printing). paper might be close to a 8 or 9pt C2S sheet. they might have some close in stock and you wouldn't need to have them order a lot for a one-off print.

as for Layout...look at the magazine. see how the pages/stories are laid out. like you said, it is somewhat simple and thus easy to replicate this style. don't forget any "side-bar" callouts or similar things the mag might have used.

And, post up some "in progress" shots to get some feedback and help.

good luck.

 

[citizenzen]

Does anyone have any tips on the printing? Do I go to a company and get a quote or is there a type of paper I can get that is close to magazine quality? I would need to print double sided to so that would have to be taken into account.

This is a copy job. A real printed piece would run you hundreds of dollars. Go down to your local Kinkos and talk to a sales rep. They should be able to get you there... or close enough.

 

[acearchie]

Hi guys

Thanks so much for all the useful information that has been given so far.

I have checked about getting it professionally printed on similar paper and I was pretty rudely dealt with today by two printers who seemed to laugh at my questions and low print run.

I have decided that I will print it at my university as I would have access to the Canon iPF5000 and both matt paper and semi gloss paper.

The printing will also be much cheaper, 90p per A3 matt sheet (as Vogue magazine is slightly wider than A4) and £1.25 per A3 Semi-Gloss sheet.

What do you guys think of that?

I have also uploaded 3 sample pages from the magazine and was wondering whether anyone could help me with some design pointers to try and replicate it as much as possible. Font/suggested designs would be great!

So far I am seeing that there is quite a lot of use of the rotated images, There are also a lot of pages full page images. There is some text wrapping around the images but on average it is quite text heavy (so I will have to think of a lot to write!). Any other tips would be great!

I have access to both illustrator and photoshop and which do you think would be better for the job? I always have the option of downloading indesign however, I have never opened the app before and would not know my way around!

Thanks

 

[citizenzen]

I have checked about getting it professionally printed on similar paper and I was pretty rudely dealt with today by two printers who seemed to laugh at my questions and low print run.

Offset printing is all about quantity. The cost of setting a job up means that it's virtually the same thing to print 1 or 1,000. Luckily for you color copies are getting far more sophisticated and should be able to produce high quality prints for a fraction of the cost of offset printing. I don't know what quality the Canon iPF5000 can give you. If you don't like what you get from it, take it around to copy shops and find out who can do better.

 

[junker]

Cool idea...

I'd recommend using InDesign for this. It can be done in the others (and some advanced photo editing in PS) but it's MUCH easier in InDesign.

You can Kern your fonts, rotate pictures, place text in any orientation (or follow a curvy "path") Add drop shadows to text and images (and text box/image boxes)

Indesign (and Quark) are what magazine layout designers/and printers use.

As for the printing, you'd be surprised what you could accomplish on a laser printer at Kinko's (or some other local print shop).

You wouldn't really need to do CMYK color separations for kinko's (big time saver - and lower learning curve for you - ergo faster completion time)

Good luck and post (visual) updates!

 

[Consultant]

Great idea!

Some printers provide on-demand low-run digital printing. They typically would have paper of various thickness and range of glossy to matt papers. They sometimes advertise to offer color copying. Plenty of those companies in New York, so I think there should be many at London or other major cities.

To look magazine quality you have to design with bleed and crop it down (for the to-the-edge look).

Do a test print on your school's laser printer and see before doing all of it.