What software to use to publish a college magazine?

SAbsar

SAbsar

Mac Graduate
Our college is coming out with this magazine - its an annual thing, and this year, they've made me the editor. So i was kinda wondering what software to use on my iMac to deal with the stuff. I used Word to get my newsletter done, but what do I use for a magazine?

Plus i have that cache-less version of Wallstreet, running OS 9.1, what software do I use on that?

Thanks for helping out in advance!
 
are you laying out the magazine or(and) doing graphic design, plus the aritcles, or do you have a team to do this stuff too, plus how long is the magazine, i work for the school paper at my college and we use indesign, word, and photoshop mainly,
 
I'd use only one computer (and best: one person) to actually perform the layout. I'd use InDesign on that. Other computers, like the WallStreet you mentioned, can be used to create graphics you want to include and to write articles. I'd use TIFF for images, EPS for vector graphics and either RTF or PlainText for the articles you'll want to import.
 
Avoid Word like the plague to create an image/text document. Printers hate Word files and they do weird things with images that you will pull your hair out over by the time you get around to the printing process. Not to mention the horrible workflow…

Quark or InDesign should do the trick. Just remember to process your images all the same and resize them to the sizes you make them in your document. This speeds up the time it takes for your printer to "RIP" the file when it's ready to print.

Last but not least, for a project of this size you MUST start with the deadline and work backwards; factoring in any and all contingencies like changes, proofing, printing time, shipping, etc. This will make your life A LOT easier.

:)
 
Thanks for all the replies.
The magazine's gonna be around 200 pages, the largest project that our college has handled yet, so i guess that i'd be ruling out Word - although i did use word for the newsletters and printed the files to PDF before i sent them to the printer.

Anyways... so it seems InDesign is a pretty popular choice! I think I'll go for that! Thanks you guys!
 
Once you get the program your next step, before you even start designing the magazine, is to talk to your printer and find out their specs: Trim sizes, live area, etc. You don't want to design the whole thing and realize you did it on the wrong paper size. Don't assume it's going to be exactly 8.5 x 11 either as different variations of this page size, usually smaller, are the norm for magazines. (I do work for San Diego Magazine here in SD.)
 
Just another query, our college has Adobe's InDesign 2, and I have QuarkXPress 6.0. Do I use QXPress, InDesign 2, or go out to buy InDesign CS?
 
Learn InDesign if your college already has it, as I'm sure that the college would like to archive your magazine layouts for future reference, and I'm hoping you won't be there that long!

Also, I'll have to second the notion to stay far away from Word. Word is not for press-printing, and printers will have a fit if you send them Word files. It's almost impossible to get any kind of high resolution color separation out of Word. Word is a word processing program, not a layout program (despite wanting to be by including templates for press-style stuff).

Here in Texas, most printers still use Quark 4/5/6, with about 60% of them supporting InDesign. It would be a good idea to contact the printer you intend to use to get some compatiblity information from them -- what layout programs do they support? How do they like to receive files? What is the turnaround/proofing time? Do they prefer raw files, or preprocessed PDF/PS files?
 
A lot of printers these days just want pdfs so they don't have to do any ripping. But getting their specs for pdf files will also be good to do.
 
Ya, so i guess i'll get with QXPress, and obviously getting in touch with the printers is a very important thing! Thanks you guys!
 
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