Tag Archives: publishing

Fantagraphics Internship: Week 2

Posted on November 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

This week I did some of the same things as last week, specifically working on detexting the Johnny Ryan comic strip, Portajohnny. With over 100 pages of comics it’s an ongoing project.

I also began work on “cleaning” some Nancy comics. This entails going into the comic with Photoshop and erasing smudges or speckles or other marks that don’t belong. Another project I helped with this week was packing up some old materials from the attic to be sorted later. Some of these things include old movie scripts, photographs, original artwork and comics, and many other things I have yet to discover. Once we have moved all of the materials we’ll sort through them into three piles: keep, throw away, and sell. It’ll be interesting to see what’s there.

I was also given a brief lesson on single copy filing, which is pretty complicated due to the many different titles, issues, and variations. For example, there are about a million Batman variations and even reprints. So the original run and the reprints need to be filed separately.

The other intern and I are going to be doing a book club together. She’s already done one with the intern before me, so she’s familiar with it but this will be my first one. We’ve chosen to do one on Castle Waiting Vol. 2, which hasn’t been released yet. I haven’t read the first one yet so I’ll have to do that before we get started on the second.


→ Leave a comment

Posted in Fantagraphics Internship

Tagged , , , , ,

NYU SPI: Week 2, part 1

Posted on June 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

Woolworth Building, where I spend all my time:

They  weren’t kidding when they described this program as “intensive”. 

Monday was spent in class listening to many speakers talk about mobile and apps, high impact covers (print), and then each group presented to Lou Cona, SVP of Conde Nast Media Group, on their advertising and marketing strategies for our magazine brands. 

Then I had to rush from our meeting with Cona to the alumni party, with a quick stop at my dorm room to change clothes. There I met many young professionals who have recently earned jobs in the publishing industry. One of which, a woman named Karen, I went out with for drinks after the party. We got along really well and I hope to hang out with her again. She works for W. H. Freeman, a publisher under MacMillan. It was really awesome getting to talk shop with her, but also just a great person to meet. 

Tuesday was hard to get through, I was very tired from going out the night before with Karen. But we got to hear Joe Hutchinson, the art director for Rolling Stone, give a great talk on print design and the role of the print art director. Then some more speakers touched on subjects such as web design, writing and editing on the web, and detailed looks at life.com and New York Magazine.

Wednesday was a little bit of a relief, we heard about social networking sites and got some interesting information about non-profit brand models from Kim Cleman, EIC of Consumer Reports, and Steve Katz, publisher of Mother Jones. We broke early and I was home by 3 p.m. (for once!) to work on some layouts of our magazine’s website. As the web art director it’s my job to come up with many layouts for a homepage, a few landing pages, and some other misc. work like a newsletter. I’m doing it all in InDesign, but my design experience has been entirely in print, so designing something for the web is very different. I’ll post some final pdf versions when they are done. 

Today was a total blur. Lisa Delaney from Spry magazine talked about service magazines, Tiffany Black, the senior producer on Inc.com talked about how to use wordpress (obviously I am already familiar with the basics) and Jim Hopkinson from wired.com/condenet gave an energetic talk about podcasting. 

Tonight I am going to my manuscript evaluation and editing workshop with Paula Derrow, articles director of Self magazine, so I’ll give an update on that later this week.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NYU Summer Institute Experience

Tagged , , ,

NYU SPI: Day 7

Posted on June 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

I won’t typically post on weekends unless something of note occurred. 

Today I went to my Advanced Design Workshop which I had been really looking forward to. Unfortunately “advanced” really means “for beginners”. 

I did learn maybe two things about InCopy and Photoshop, but the teacher spent most of the time showing people how to use InDesign, which I am pretty good at. I’m sure a lot of people needed the step-by-step tutorial but I felt like it was a waste of time. I really needed to learn Photoshop, but she didn’t spend hardly any time on it so I came away with hardly any knowledge. 

I think the classes should have been separated one class for people who need to learn Photoshop and one for the InDesign kids. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to figure out Photoshop myself. There’s another workshop on Friday so maybe she’ll get more in-depth then. 

All in all, this week has been hectic and crazy. I just want to sleep and watch tv, which feels ridiculous due to the fact that I’m in this amazing city. Hard to really get much out of it when I am so busy. 

Tomorrow is the start of another really busy week, and Friday I get me resume critiqued by someone from Random House (omg!) so I am really looking forward to that. Once I get feedback on my resume I’ll begin sending them out and hitting the job search hard. I want to do this right the first time, and I’ve already learned all the many ways one can mess up simple things like resume formatting and cover letter writing.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NYU Summer Institute Experience

Tagged , ,

NYU Publishing Institute Experience- Part 2

Posted on April 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Posts about my experiences at the 2010 NYU Summer Publishing Institute will, in the future, have the heading SPI Part  #. 

So after my post whining about lack of information from NYU, I receive a e-mail welcome letter with just the sorts of things I was so desperate to hear about. 

I would like to take this time to give a shout out to e-mail: E-mail, you were the best invention ever. 

For example, I received my acceptance e-mail three weeks before I received my actual acceptance letter in the mail. How could I have possibly waited that long in the old days before e-mail? I would have gone insane. Plus, with all of the things one must take care of immediately (loans, housing applications), I needed that time. 

From my wonderful welcome letter I now know about the program directors:

Donna Sapolin will direct the Magazine Section of the Institute. She is a multimedia content consultant focusing on print and website development. She previously served as vice president and editor-in-chief of Home magazine, vice president and executive editor of PointClickHome.com, and editorial director of the Woman’s Day Special Interest Publications. She has also worked with publications such as This Old House magazine, Food & Wine magazine, and Metropolitan Home magazine.

Libby Jordan Libby Jordan is President of Musubu Inc., a publishing consulting company offering marketing, publicity, advertising, and design services as well as digital initiatives, author coaching, and editorial guidance. Prior to launching her own business, Libby was Senior Vice President and Associate Publisher of the Collins, Collins Design, and William Morrow imprints of HarperCollins Publishers. She also served as Vice President, Director of Marketing for the Dell/Delacorte division of Random House. Jordan has worked on campaigns for Jack Welch, Jack Canfield, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Elmore Leonard, Danielle Steel, John Grisham, Harlan Coben, and others. Before pursuing a career in book publishing, she worked in promotion and merchandising for the Hearst corporation. She is a graduate of Dickinson College.

I have also learned that I will most likely be residing in an apartment-style dorm called Palladium dormitory located off Union Square and a whole bunch of other stuff, interesting to me but probably not to you. 

This boost of information has rekindled my excitement and made me forget about the horror of how much it will cost and what a crappy loan I had to take out to afford it.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NYU Summer Institute Experience

Tagged , ,

NYU Summer Publishing Institute Experience- Part 1

Posted on April 13, 2010 | 1 Comment

Ah, the beginnings. I tortured myself for months writing and re-writing the SOPs, reworked my resume just as many times, and changed the “Books You’ve Read Recently” at least five times. Partly because I read so many books during the duration of the application process, and partly I kept changing my mind when trying to pick the five books that best made me look smart, up-to-date, but not pretentious. 

It is very possible I over thought everything. 

After all the work, I ended up applying to three summer publishing programs (getting a Masters in publishing seemed expensive, time consuming, and probably pointless). I applied to NYU, Columbia, and University of Denver. NYU accepted me first, and based on a strong feeling Columbia would reject me (and the fact that NYU is pretty damn awesome) I committed to NYU right away. University of Denver accepted me, and Columbia did indeed reject me. 

So. The hard part is over, right? I’ve been accepted. I’ve sent in my $500 tuition deposit. Everything is a go!

No, it’s not.

First there is the minor issue on how to pay for this wonderful experience. Obviously I don’t have the $6,000 I need for tuition and housing just gathering dust in my bank account. So, the student loan.

Except. Because it’s such a short certificate program I cannot get the regular federal (wonderful) loans. I have to apply for the dreaded, expensive, PRIVATE loan. 

That is still in the process of being figured out. I’ve applied to Sallie Mae (as I already owe them money from my first bout of education) and eagerly await their response. 

Then housing. Tution is only $4900, the rest of the total cost goes to housing and stupid mandatory meal plans. So I had to apply for dorm housing and pay the $500 deposit on that, too. 

All of this would be nothing if NYU would send me some more information. Like, a program guide in the mail. An e-mail explaining my next steps. Something that tells me I have done everything correctly and look! It’s all totally worth it because this summer is going to be amazing in these 10 ways….

But alas, NYU has quieted down since first accepting me and acknowledging the receipt of my deposits. My excitement has fizzled out under the strain of the expense and paperwork. 

Thus begins my journey through the 2010 NYU Publishing Institute.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in 2010 NYU Summer Institute Experience

Tagged , , , ,