Production Progress

Production Progress of a Magazine 

Introduction

Many of magazines feature articles about certain topics they have covered in previous issues. They do so in a certain way near enough every year. The reason why they do this is because the repeated topics are particularly relevant to their target audience and there is an opportunity to include new developments.Music magazines regularly put a key topic to increase the like hood of getting new readers. Also during the production the editor has to be careful to keep the regular readers and try to new readers to be interested in reading the magazine.

Plan

Firstly they create a flat plan, it can be just a single sheet of A4 paper and can be even bigger so they can create little pages drawn on it to make a sequence to the magazine. Then the editor uses the flat plan to  mark which page goes where and the positioning is as well. after that they split they colour the flat plan out so they know what the colour scheme is for the magazine, then it is  sent down to the print shop when the flat plan is complete.
The flat plan is normally is put on a wall in the office, so writers can start to write out the articles in brief and editors can create advertisements in brief. once an article has been sub-edited and revised one diagonal stroke will be put through the article name on the flat plan. Then they final proof read and has had corrections on the article then they put another diagonal stroke across the little page on the article.

Research and Writing

After the brief planning the writers do research and copy writing. Then some of the staff go phoning around celebrities agents to arrange meetings so they can have a interview with the people who they are writing about, the interviewees they normally do some research about them and and try to ask questions about the topic of the article. The editorial team usually take it in turns to sifting through post sent to the editorial office by marketing managers, agents and PR agencies and sorting it into useful items, potentially use able items and rubbish. Invariably it is mostly rubbish. PR agencies will send the same press releases a number of times.

Sub- editing

Sub-editing is normally before the page layout or it can be during page layout. If there is one sub editor he/she will act in the interests of quality control and query any loose ends, if the text is not clear to understand the text or items the text. The sub editor will try to fill out all of the page if the article runs to short If the article runs too short. Once they have read an article they will cut it down to a size to fill the space available or ask the person who wrote it to cut down or re-write certain parts to let them know.

Production

Once the editorial staff have laid out the pages using software like Microsoft's In Design. Often the layout staff are working with the art director to focus on set the advert pages and the lay out the pages in the magazine.Complex articles are usually given to the art director to arrange a different layout.
Most of the publication staff do not typeset pages from scratch, they already have templates created by the art/layout department or they just use on of the templates from an old magazine also they can get the same text form the old articles.
Normally shortcuts are set up in the template or a DTP(desktop publishing) document, so they can put the text into the correct font and size is a simple matter of highlighting the text and selecting  style sheet from a floating palette on the screen or pressing a single key on the keyboard.

Proof reading 

When the pages are laid out and completed the members of the editorial staff will print them off and then give the pages to the other half of the editorial staff to proof read the pages. After that they mark up the corrections onto a consolidation sheet, next they put the  corrections onto a DTP file. As soon as the the corrections are handed in the article will be printed out again to proof read the writing again to make sure they have no errors on the articles, then if there if any corrections have been missed they will change it and then put it in the publication and carry on with the rest of the progress witch is putting the photographs into the publication as well, but before that happens they scan the photos then after that they crop and size out photos so they fit nicely into the publication.

Soon as the sections of the pages is completed they are sent to the advanced printers so then it sends out a printed version to proof read and if looks interesting to see so then they can send the final print for distribution.

Distribution

Once the proof reading has been approved, then they start off printing off the final product. after that they send it off to a warehouse ready for the distribution. Then the magazines are sent to shops to be sold.

How this research helped me 

The reason why I have researched about the production process is because I feel like I will use the same process for when I am creating my magazine. With this research I could use this for a step by step for the production for the magazine, but I wont be able to get teams together though because it for the my coursework so I have create the magazine on my own. Overall this gives me a clear view about how they music magazines.