Great design on a slashed budget

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May 1, 1992 by Vera Steiner

How to keep your magazine looking good when times are bad.

As the design members of the publication team, many art directors are facing their greatest challenge in nearly a decade. Publishers of trade, consumer and association magazines are cutting art and production budgets to the bone, while mandating that art directors produce the same well-designed publications as before.

Impossible? No. But some basic steps have to be taken to establish an environment conducive to low-cost, high-quality art. To begin, the art director must make the effort to learn about production methods and their relative costs. Art directors who have been happily designing in a vacuum of creativity, giving little thought to the production aspects of their projects, must change their approach. They must develop open, clear and friendly communications with their production departments, bringing the production people into the loop before they start designing - not when they are ready to hand over mechanicals, disks or film.

A production person can tell a designer when a format or element will cost too much or slow things down. The designer can then decide if the time and/or cost is worth it - or, if not, can come up with alternatives that do not compromise the appearance of the magazine.

Working together, having open access to one another, and (if you'll excuse the expression) communicating, creates the best environment for achieving mutual goals of cost-efficient, creative and exciting design.

Unfortunately, the next step is to realize that some of your favorite design elements (the ones that drive costs up) might have to be reduced or eliminated - at least for the duration of this economic downturn. Here is the "short" list of the most obvious and expensive: die cuts, embossing, hot stamping, metallic inks, varnish effects, special papers, unusual sizes, and anything done by hand. Not everything has to go, of course, but more careful consideration has to be given to costly techniques.

These days, though, steering clear of the obvious is not enough. You may have to consider reducing the number of those familiar design devices that immediately added graphic interest - and cost - to layouts. These include silhouetted photos, full bleeds, multiple color screens, colors butting up against other colors, knock-outs, fifth color in a four-color book, critical trapping situations, and original commissioned illustrations and photography, especially on-location work.

If all this sounds too draconian, keep in mind that, as a magazine art director, you are not creating "art for art's sake," but are engaged in what used to be called "commercial art." That term has gone out of fashion and is considered crass, but it is exactly what you do. The object of the magazine publishing game is to make a profit - and that's commerce. True, the art department is not a profit center, but by keeping costs down, an art director can make a direct contribution to his or her magazine's financial health.

Furthermore, cutting back on the expensive elements does not leave you without options. Peg Haw, production manager of Meetings & Conventions, suggests using bright colors over large areas, and heavier coverage to keep the colors true and stable. She also suggests avoiding overpowering a page with too many color photos, using one large photo for dramatic effect instead. This cuts down the cost of multiple color separations and stripping. I second it for better visual effect as well as cost savings.

Typography-as-design is another way to go. Strong, bold typographic effects (or delicate, soft ones, if the subject matter so dictates) can take the place of costly photos or illustrations and their associated color separation, stripping and printing costs. In these cases, it is important to get headline copy from the editor early in the design stage, since that headline will be the major design element. Because many editors like to leave the writing of the headline for last, there may be some resistance to this idea. But it is a practical approach that saves money.

Strong type design can also be tied to a smaller (less expensive) spot illustration or an existing photo.

Here are four more tips on ways to save without cutting quality:

* Learn to bargain. In pre-recession days, we figured that a commissioned cover illustration for a trade publication, for instance, would cost between $1,000 and $2,000. We'd just call our choice of illustrator and make the assignment. Now it's a little different. We call the same first-choice artist - but now we haggle. We state, truthfully, that our budgets are lower this year than last, but we need the same quality art. Nobody likes this, of course - not the haggler or the hagglee - but it's a fact of current business life, and most illustrators understand. Unfortunately for them, business may have dropped off, too - meaning they need to take the job even at the lower price. A good, ongoing relationship really helps in these situations.