The Exciting World Of Magazine Production

By Author: Kaitlyn Miller
Total Articles: 90
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Have you ever wondered what goes on in magazine printing companies? As you get your monthly subscription of your favorite glossies, have you ever thought about the effort that goes in the production of these magazines?

Magazine production, especially of those monthly titles, is very exciting because of the pressure and the deadlines that the people behind it face. Each page entails so much production and editing work and they all have to beat the printing deadline so that the operators can start running the presses in time for the circulation deadline. If the magazine comes out late, the sales suffer and the readers get angry.

While in most part the production process overlaps, but these are the things that the magazine staff has to face in order to produce a single issue.

The editorial staff brainstorms the theme and the possible content of the next issue. While they do this, they immediately inform advertising about this. Or they do the brainstorming together with the advertising department because they have to make sure that they can sell the magazines both to the readers as well as the advertisers. Both ...
... work hand in hand in order to bring income to the publishing company. Otherwise, they would all lose their jobs.

While the editorial works on the stories—interviewing people, doing research, scheduling photo shoots, and the like—the advertising works on calling advertisers related to the stories. They may already have a pool of advertisers that have signed up for an annual contract of ad placement, but the additional ones are those companies that seek to place their ads on niche stories. Like for example, if you are doing a feature on osteoporosis and how it is affecting women in the locality, the sales executives will then sell ad spaces to products related to osteoporosis, such as calcium-enriched milk and calcium supplements.

As both departments work, they submit their stories for layout and design to the graphics department. The creative guys will then do the layouts for all the stories as they come in one by one or altogether. The editors keep checking the galleys of these stories until they are finally ready for printing.

The new pages are then processed for color separation. Not all pages are processed as some ad pages are just recurring and so the printer can still use the same plates for these, unless there are already scratches. After the films are done, these are then plated and then loaded in the commercial printer. When all the pages are done, these are then passed on to the finishing department for collating and then binding. Binding takes some time because glossies are thick and need to be perfect bound. It seems that everyone works on the double to get the magazine out in the stands on time. Additionally, circulation department still has to address and mail the subscriptions. All the billing concerns for both advertising and circulation are handled by the finance department.

During all these times, tempers could flare because of the deadly deadlines and the power play on whose idea is the best. But it is really rewarding to work for magazines because you get to see your work in print. Magazine printing may be a long and complicated process but it only has one goal—and that is to please its reader.

For more information, you can visit this page on magazine printing