5 posts tagged “layout”
[Cross-posted] Each time we put out a Lucire in print, regardless of country, I wonder: do the folks in the countries (such as the UK) where the magazine is not available know what some of the layouts look like?
This time around, Laura and I decided we would do a 52 pp. downloadable PDF, containing some of the pages, for those who can’t get Lucire where they are. And for those who can, such as in New Zealand, the downloadable PDF contains some extra pages, and even an article that we’ve earmarked for issue 26. There are two more pages for a shoot; in fact, there’s one shoot in there by Hannah Richards that you won’t have seen at all.
It’s almost full circle: I remember putting together a 52 pp. PDF in 2003 as a L’Oréal New Zealand Fashion Week special in the pre-print days. It was hugely successful, and was used extensively by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise to market Kiwi designers offshore.
Readers unaccustomed to the print Lucire might know we have pretty outstanding journalists among our team based on the longer articles that appear online. But you don’t get to see the fun we have with the look, and the PDF addresses that.
We also thought we’d champion some of our advertisers as an extra thank-you.
Since the book is 200 dpi and 13 Mbyte, it was better stored on a free service. Head over to Rapidshare, where you can download the issue 25 supplement, as we call it, free. There may be a small delay for the free service but we think it’s well worth it.
I am going to be doing some banners to promote Autocade soon. It’s still very much in beta with only a few dozen cars on it, but I have been thinking about the reasons I started it.
- There are a few, but not many, car sites out there with geographically unbiased information. I believe that German cars, for example, should be written with the point of view that the German market is the domestic one and others are export ones. Wikipedia is not one of them. It tends to take the American view on a lot of topics, but 80 per cent of the internet audience is not Stateside. Some of the better car wikis out there also have this bias, though they do not claim to be international—Wikipedia does.
- The Wikipedia layout is boring.
- I want basic information, not long stories, and I should be able to trace the global lineages of car models relatively simply. I’m fine with the long stuff appearing at specialist sites, but there should be one place where I can get the basics, including info on model changes and even a little opinion on the vehicle.
- I am more passionate about cars than many other things in life.
When I began researching some of the Autocade entries, I was surprised to note how much incorrect information exists on Wikipedia about various models—and that I was absolutely right to have doubts about it. (I realized that I could go and edit Wikipedia myself, but why bother, if the actual editorial approach differs?) I also noticed how many references I have that take the brief format—Michael Sedgwick’s work, the first issues of Your Classic with buyers’ guides, and The Complete Car Guide five-week supplement in Autocar & Motor in 1988. This worked with readers like me then, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t work now in 2008.
The way Wikipedia and some other sites is organized isn’t to my liking. For example, one of the Autocade entries is on the Holden Belmont. There is no such entry at Wikipedia: searching for the car name takes you to a forwarded page on the Holden Kingswood.
But if I wanted information on the Holden Kingswood, I would type in Holden Kingswood. Specifically, I wanted information on the Belmont, to cross-check the information I had. There is a lineage there, and the way the engine options differed between series is interesting to car nuts.
I took Sedgwick’s approach and recorded the Belmont separately of the Kingswood, just as he did in the same circumstances.
And I have been using non-digital sources to confirm a lot of the info.
Most of the work is still mine, but I’d welcome extra pairs of hands once the marketing gets under way, provided that senior editors take the approach that I have above.
My work isn’t perfect and I am sure I have made my share of mistakes, but I hope I have made fewer, relative to the number of pages on Autocade, than many generous writers of Wikipedia have. Then again, there is less to go wrong at Autocade. It looks like too many cooks spoiling the broth at Wikipedia (i.e. you can’t bank on the Wales)—something we need to be careful with as Autocade goes out of beta later this year.
These may or may not be the next covers for Lucire. One is shot in Paris, the other in LA (Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell, who plays Juliet). There are two more in the offing, and the cover lines haven’t been put on yet (though they will follow suggestions made by Voxers last month). Any preferences, bearing in mind that dark covers, traditionally, do not do as well in New Zealand?
Just so folks know, despite being very near the deadline, I managed to get in a lot of feedback from this blog for Lucire’s latest cover:
The photograph is identical, but the type is more restrained. I’m glad we took out the red type. One cover line was removed. We also decided on a widely spaced ‘Tenth Anniversary Year’ underneath the masthead.
One more website post. I guess I am pretty proud of this Lucire redesign, hence I want to show it off. It appears in an advertisement in Her Business magazine in New Zealand. Our CMS is still not ready, but at least the site looks good. I had to explain to a colleague this was not “the titty issue” despite the swimwear shoot leading the page, and the décolleté of our US editor, Summer Rayne Oakes, in the black-and-white shot.
I was lucky the video from YouTube fitted so well. Haven’t enjoyed the look of the online edition of Lucire this much since the last major redesign at the end of 2002.
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