Production central: it may be cheaper to centralize your art/production departments, but will those savings crush creativity?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June, 1998 by Rolf Maurer

It may be cheaper to centralize your art/production departments, but will those savings crush creativity?

One production department to serve all of a company's titles is more cost-effective than one department for each title. But what about creativity? FOLIO: spoke with art and production professionals at consumer and trade magazines to learn which arrangement works best for them.--Rolf Maurer

Peter Ruiz Vice president, production, Krause Publications, Inc.

We publish over 30 special-interest titles and have relied on a centralized approach throughout our'46 years of operation. Each magazine is given a window of so many days with its divisional art department in which to get the current issue done. To minimize delays, we use a Quark-based editorial system. As for the question of creative affinity, each art director oversees several closely related titles in the same group (like Numismatic News, Coins and Coin Prices) and is able to apply certain conventions across the board.

Jonathan Simpson-Bint President, Games Division, Imagine Media, Inc.

We're committed to separate creative teams for the seven magazines in our digital and games divisions. Most titles have an art director, associate art director and a graphic designer because we believe the sense of ownership such a one-to-one relationship instills keeps creative sparks flying. I think the savings supposedly accrued through centralization are debatable because if you have a lot of books with the same frequency, you end up with a large art department that divides work in a decentralized manner anyway.

Lisa Earlywine Production manager, World Publications, Inc.

Our art department setup embraces a little bit of both worlds. We publish 10 watersports-related titles ranging in frequency from quarterly to nine-times-a-year, and have six art directors and three associate artists (who also work on circulation and advertising for all the magazines). An art director may be devoted to one or two titles, depending on their frequencies. In this respect we lean toward centralization. Occasionally, when an art director is alternating between two books, conflicts can arise in production flow when art activities for one magazine interfere with those for another. Yet, it is this sharing of art directors among the books as they are added that has helped the company grow in the last five years. We try to inspire a sense of proprietary attachment by making sure the art directors work on magazines with similar subject matter.

Jacqueline Summers Editorial director, Salon Division, Vance Publishing

We use a centralized production department because it's cheaper to print in quantity. But art is handled on 4 more individualized basis, to varying degrees, depending on the division of the company. While centralizing art saves money, an art director for each book, or each division, means more control over, and individualized attention to, the product by those most closely associated with it. Of course, you don't want too few people entrusted with placing their personal imprint on the book, or you could find yourself out on a limb if they get sick.

Ty Bobit President & COO, Bobit Publishing

We have 21 trade books and a centralized department comprising four teams: one art director and two graphic artists each. Any month, we produce from 12 to 14 magazines, and each team is assigned three titles, on average, to work on per month. Because most of our titles are small-size, from a staff standpoint, it is too difficult to assign a full-time art person for even two titles to keep them busy. Centralization allows us to spread the work across the peaks and valleys of the production cycle, so that any overload in one area can be taken up by someone in another. The downside is that the graphics team is not located close to the magazines they are working on, so they don't have as good a rapport with the title and its staff as they would if the departments were decentralized. As a result, the communication process takes a bit more time and attention. We compensate by working extra hard to establish an all-inclusive team spirit by, for example, including the graphics people in pre- and post-production meetings, as well as on trips to such functions as the Maggie Awards.