The Increasingly Over-Burdened Art Department

It’s often been said that art is subjective. The same could be said about the art process in magazine publishing. While some multi-title publishers believe in one art team for one title, others like to throw the talent at whichever title they can best lend a hand to at the time. Technology has actually been a double-edged sword for the creative department—expediting the print process, but also leading to increased multimedia publishing and marketing, the design of which is often placed on the art department’s plate. Balancing the multiple demands on the art department’s time can be a real challenge. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look into different publishing art and production departments to see how they’re running various creative and production processes. eRepublic: Keep ‘em SeparatedDennis McKenna, CEO of Folsom, Calif.-based eRepublic, is keeping print and Web somewhat separated.“I think you need to keep your art team in print and let other people handle the Web or promotional material,” he says. “Despite occasionally having the art director add design input to the Web, I believe them putting in a lot of time wastes their talent. Also, I’ve found a Web designer whose talent doesn’t necessarily translate into having a clue about print.”eRepublic, which boasts four publications, the most prominent being the 77,000-circ monthly Government Technology, has an art team of five set to do battle for each of the company’s titles: the creative director, an art director, two graphic designers and an illustrator. “We leave our creative director to concentrate on the overall look and feel of the publication, while the art director is largely responsible for page-by-page of the issue. Our graphic designers are either following or designing templates for each section.” “The titles, which range from 65 to 100 pages, each are produced on a four-week production cycle. McKenna would like to make they cycle longer, but doesn’t see it as a possibility because of the Web. “The editorial team takes a long time because of the demand on them for so much copy,” he says. “For this reason, we’ll occasionally outsource to freelance designers to make the four-week time frame. Because we have books running on different production cycles and want our best people on all of them, it almost becomes like a chess game—but I think it makes the staff work better. By being able to switch off magazines, they don’t get in a rut as easily.”String Letter Publishing: a Tiered ApproachEllen Richman, production director of San Rafael, Calif.-based String Letter publishing, with seven music magazines, including 60,000-circ monthly Acoustic Guitar, oversees the design and production process and utilizes the art director for the magazines’ graphic look, from covers to features to even setting up initial design templates. Promo art often can be done by the art director, she says, as it is for the magazines’ media kits. Insert cards or sales pieces are sometimes handled by the production coordinator, says Richman.As far as production goes, she says, “We’re handling the prepress, such as postscript,” she says. “The printers just output and do direct to plate. We send our files to a server which converts postscript fields to press-ready PDF X1As. Flight checks also allow assurance that they conform to standard.” String Letter, which has five art staff for seven magazines, including a designer and two production coordinators, is even saving time and money in the art department when it comes to subscription cards. “We gang up all our cards on the web sheet so we can squeeze quite a number of cards out,” Richman says. “Two months’ worth at a time.” Jeff Linson, String Letter’s fulfillment manager, estimates the savings per year from this move is $36,000. “It also allows us to be ready for the ad people needing a card late,” he says.TechTarget: A Targeted Approach Mark Schlack had an intriguing production challenge in that his Needham, Mass.-based company TechTarget was actually evolving from all Web properties to launching three print titles, among them the roughly-60,000-circ monthly Information Security. Schlack, who is vice president of editorial, felt it was important to have a separate art staff for each magazine and not have overlap with the Web designers. “The majority of what we do online is photos of people or products,” he says. “We have a team that processes photos and sizes them, but print staffs who do entire issues and articles need a different discipline for catching the eye.” Each magazine’s art staff consists of just one full-time person—an art director—but they hire freelance illustrators and photographers as needed. “The art director is responsible for making Quark versions of the magazine and laying out articles in low res,” he says. “We let a central production person take care of prepress.” Boy Scouts of America: No Promo Art or Web DetailsBob Wiemers, operations director for the magazine division of Irving, Dallas-based Boy Scouts of America, has to coordinate two seven-figure-circ publications, Boys’ Life and Scouting. One tactic he uses is to “artificially” schedule Scouting’s due date a week early, so everything isn’t coming in at the same time. “With Scouting coming out six times a year and Boys’ Life 12 times, a dual-issue production cycle should always be avoided. We have the production cycle at [one] month, and we postscript pages, but we don’t go right from InDesign to PDF. First, we put it through Acrobat Distiller, which we find refines the process.” Five people are on the art staff, including two designers and a scanning operator, and all promo material is handled by a separate art director in the company’s marketing department. As far as the magazine’s art director and his/her involvement with the Web, Wiemers likes them to lend a vision, but not keystrokes. “Because of how busy they are with the magazine, they’re better off just handing off the magazine files and then suggesting flash games or other possibilities,” he says. The Humane Society of the U.S.: Adaptability Is KeyPaula Jaworski, creative director of Washington, D.C.-based The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which publishes Animal Sheltering, among endless other publications and materials, likes to keep her designers on the same title, but prefers to also mix it up, so that if there’s a staffing flux or someone’s sick, a title doesn’t suffer for it. Regardless of plans, Jaworski says, every staffer’s tasks can change month to month.“It really depends on what’s on my plate as much as anything,” she says. “I’m also in charge of newsletters and other things, so when I can’t be the point person, I assign work based on people’s strong points. Some designers are good at formatting or have a better Photoshop ability.”Jaworski says layout takes about a week, while the production cycle varies. She also notes that they keep each title’s art staffs as low as two to three people because they use stock photography, which means photo-shoot headaches are kept to a minimum, as is the cost of the shoot itself. “Unfortunately, stock art is not nearly as good,” she says. Future ImprovementsKevin Mullan, senior vice president, manufacturing and production, for Primedia, oversees more than 100 titles, including Soap Opera Digest and Motor Trend, and says that the future of the art process will depend partly on how much you take advantage of digitally.“The amount of savings has been 10 to 25 percent for most companies,” he says, “yet you still hear about magazines making 5 percent or less. There’s no question in my mind that they’re failing to capitalize a t that level.” Jaworski thinks that art staffers could become more involved in the Web in the future, as long as they’re not being stretched beyond inserting PDF versions of magazine articles or highlighting a particular print article and adding Web-only art. “Staffs are being stretched like never before,” she says. “Even the most talented can only do so much.”Eric Butterman is a New York-based writer and creator of the seminar “Better Business Writing: From E-mails To Everything That Makes You Money.” He can be contacted at EricButterman@Yahoo.com.

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The Increasingly Over-Burdened Art Department

Eric Butterman

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