A compressed and amusing view of how a magazine is made

Here, (thanks to the magCulture blog), is a happily frenetic video portrayal of how an issue of the British magazine Little White Lies is made."We wanted to make a short film that captured some of the love, care and hand-crafted passion that goes into the making of an issue of LWLies. We produce six issues each year, and for the two month period that we're working on a particular issue, we

Making customized magazines

Interesting video showing how Wallpaper* magazine recently provided its readers with an opportunity to custom-design their covers, using a toolkit of icons, type and artwork. [thanks to Magculture]

Publishers' outsourcing of pre-press steadily growing

It would seem that magazine publishers, at least in the U.S. (and probably in Canada) are moving steadily away from doing all of their own pre-press in-house. According to Folio: magazine's 2010 manufacturing and production trends research, the number of publishers doing it all themselves was 60% last year and only 51% this year. Complete outsourcing has stayed steady at about 17% of publishers.

Fast track production system will shorten deadlines for ads in Rogers consumer magazines

Rogers Publishing says it is launching its promised Pressxpress production schedule with the January 2010 issues of Chatelaine and its French counterpart Châtelaine. This will be followed by the March 2010 issues of Flare, Today's Parent, Loulou and Glow.  Under the new sped- up manufacturing and production system, advertisers can submit material for publication within two weeks of the final

Rogers and Transcon team up to cut ad insertion lead times to 2 weeks

Canada's two largest magazine publishing companies, Rogers Publishing and Transcontinental Media, have announced that they are cooperating in cutting the lead times for advertisers' insertion in the companies' monthly magazines. Pressexpress is an ad-close schedule that means ad creative can be sumbitted only two weeks prior to publication.Brian Segal, president and CEO of Rogers told Marketing

Concept to finished mag in a day and a half

In a day and a half, Derek Powazek created a one-off magazine called Strange Light about the red duststorm that swept eastern Australia. He blogs about how he created the finished product, complete with 54 gorgeous photos (cleared with the photographers) in less than two days. We read about it in Nieman Journalism Labs. Quick turnarounds are not exactly new, with insta-books and special

Paid ad traffic management portal launched by BC publisher

[This post has been updated]Media Hill Publications Inc. of Burnaby, B.C. has announced the launch of AdSupplier.com an integrated online ad traffic management application designed to fit the needs of the small to mid-size magazine publisher.Billing itself as an “ad traffic management portal” AdSupplier’s features include: automated insertion order confirmations; email reminders of approaching

Ad preflight portal has signed up 90 titles

More than 90 magazines have signed up for AdDirect™, Magazines Canada’s web-based magazine ad preflight and delivery portal, launched last month. The service, which was launched in July, automatically validates client PDF ad files against your own unique publishing specifications and instantly delivers them to you, print-ready, along with an automatic digital notification that the ad file is

Magazines Canada launches ad portal to automate workflows

Magazines Canada has launched AdDirect™, a free, web-based ad preflighting and delivery portal that will help to automate workflow and ad handling for advertisers and advertising agencies. The new portal is powered by SendMyAd.AdDirect™ automatically validates ad files against Magazines Canada and publishers’ specifications and instantly delivers them to any participating title. Plus senders

Your name and rep here; Graphic Arts hyper-customizes its covers

Graphic Arts magazine, a Newmarket-based business-to-business title has published an October issue in which all three covers are customized to the customer receiving them, according to a story in Media in Canada. The project was carried out for Fujifilm Canada and, in the process, the magazine produced more than 428,000 variations on its covers.Graphic Arts is published 10 times a year and has a

Quebecor closes Vancouver mag printing plant

Quebecor is closing a profitable magazine printing plant in Vancouver, throwing 200 people out of work, becuse it doesn't like its contract with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP). At least that's what the president of Canada's largest media union, Dave Coles, is saying publicly. The Southeast Marine Drive plant prints many west coast titles."I am surprised and disappointed

Quebecor World buys digital prepress specialist firm

Quebecor World Inc., the heavyweight magazine printer, has beefed up its prepress capabilities by acquiring Colorscope, a California-based specialist boutique firm in digital media management and overseas production support. No price was disclosed.The company, founded in 1976, has facilities in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Seattle and Shanghai. The president of Colorscope, Andrew Cha, becomes