[FPO] Master Classes
May 8 & 9, 2008
Now in its fifth year, Master Classes on Design,
Editorial & Production have become part of FPO Magazine.
Would you like to:
- Produce a more ENGAGING magazine
- IMPROVE critical parts of your magazine
- Increase reader SATISFACTION
- Have a more PRODUCTIVE STAFF
Do YOU know...
- What’s the WEAKEST PART of your publication —
and how you can improve it? - Why is your ISSUE MAP the critical design element?
- How ARCHETYPES can give your pub more credibility?
- Why “TENT POLES” make your title more interesting?
- How to create compelling FRANCHISE CONTENT?
- How you can INCREASE your publication’s “Q”?
- What’s “C/P/R” — and how can it improve your magazine?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions — or worse — didn’t even know to ask them, [FPO] Master Classes could be the best investment your publication has ever made.
For 2008 the sessions have been expanded to 6 two-hour sessions. Plus [FPO] Master Classes Introduces “15-Minute Makeovers” — proactive mini-sessions that can improve the most important parts of your magazine.
[FPO] subscribers save 25% for up to two people if they register before April 15th. Take $150 each off the regular fee of $799.
Sign Up Online
The two day/six class event includes lunches and a welcome reception. Registration is $799.
Click here to register. You will be billed later.
The Classes
DAY 1, MAY 8th:
Design From the Inside Out
Mission Possible: Jazzing up Your Issue Map
Cover Me: Branding and Editorial Impact
DAY 2, MAY 9th:
Editors and Art Directors in Harmony
C/P/R for Enthusiast, Trade and Association Publications
The Ten-Step Magazine Self-Critique
Class 1 — Design From the Inside Out
Everything we know about magazine design is now presented in an even more practical and accessible format. It’s an excellent way for everyone who works on a magazine to see how design and editorial work together. This class can help your entire staff “get on the same page.”
It’s sexy to concentrate on covers, TOCs or features, but real editorial design comes from applying a carefully thought through mission, the structure of the content, and carefully chosen visual elements. Here’s a step-by-step approach to examining these elements and how they ultimately are applied to your publication’s visual identity.
Examine these critical issues:
- Three types of design and why each is important
- The “basics” of design, why they are often ignored and why getting them right is crucial
- Mission statements and business plans as the fundamentals for design
- Use “archetypes” to engage the reader
- Prioritization and navigation ideas that help your reader “get it”
- Brand your magazine through design and franchise content
- Use “C/P/R” to breathe life into your pub
- Get the most from covers and contents
Class 2 — Mission Possible: Jazzing Up Your Issue Map & Calendar
Great magazines are built around a clearly defined mission statement that accounts for the readership audience, the scope of the publication and the real-world competition that makes the publication a viable business. Well conceived missions statements lead to efficient issue maps that structure scope, prioritize content and highlight vertical audience groups. Mission Possible examines the make up of a strong mission statement, parses the statement for editorial direction and translates it into a structural template for your publication.
You’ll put these ideas to the test on your own magazine:
- Why a mission statement is NOT a positioning statement
- The four parts of a mission statement and how each contributes to a great publication
- Using mission statements to put everybody on the same page.
- Making a magazine issue map from a mission statement.
- Content categorization, prioritization and structure in three dimensions: template, issue and volume.
- 15-minute Makeover — Making your TOC sell your book.
Class 3 — Cover Me: Branding and Impact
on Your Most Important Page
Your cover is the first opportunity to engage your readers, make promises of content, define the tone and scope of your magazine. Your magazine has two covers: the template cover design and the issue implementation. We will examine the relationship between the two and do some hands-on work with your own covers to raise the bar on the quality of your cover.
“Cover Me” will delve into:
- What makes a great cover template
- The value of taglines
- Coverlines, organization and tone
- Emphasis techniques
- Cover image strategies
- Initiating branding that carries inside
- Spines, barcodes, dates, and other regular minutiae — getting the details right
- 15-minute makeover — Improving your cover template. Deconstruct your current cover and create a stronger, more dramatic template.
Class 4 — Editors and Art Directors Working in Harmony
Understand the critical skills and requirements of designers, and the role they play in enhancing editorial impact, improving reader response and making your magazine have a consistent “personality.” Editors need a clear understanding of the value of design and how they play the vital role in getting the best from their designers; and designers need empowerment and responsibility to enhance the editorial.
Workflow issues, job scope and responsibility for direction are the three greatest challenges faced by most creative staffs. Poor execution and fortress mentality leads to low productivity, a stifling of creativity and bad personnel relationships. This session tries to directly tackle the issues that lead to work fatigue and dysfunction in your staff and create more harmony and creative energy that can be applied to every issue of your magazine.
This class examines these delicate issues:
- Workflows that work better
- Job scopes that empower creativity and responsibility
- Sharing editorial development
- Focusing on templates and editorial structure
- Tweaking the smallest elements
- Improving the editorial voice in the magazine
- Building in critical long-term necessities
- 15-minute makeover — crafting a workflow that fits your magazine. Examine your personnel, their jobs and your worst workflow bottlenecks and craft solutions based on personal responsibility and reward.
Class 5 — CPR for Enthusiast, Trade & Association Pubs
Enthusiast, B-to-B and Association titles have their own unique editorial and design issues, but their value applies to every kind of publication. Producing a quality publication in an environment of controlled expenditures and competing with titles produced by larger publishers present formidable challenges to niche magazines.
Explore techniques that make your magazine a stronger asset for your organization and an information vehicle that becomes a necessity for your readership. Review redesigns of these types of titles and the philosophies behind their editorial structure and design priorities.
Your publication will benefit from these areas:
- Design counts: easy ways to make your publication more interesting, your readership excited and your management happier
- Examine the calendar: make the year special
- Covers, contents pages and issue flow: the keys to reader interest
- Become the 800-pound gorilla in your industry
- Politics and value: positioning your publication as an essential value-added benefit in your organization beyond the bottom line
- 15 minute makeover — Use CPR to craft new editorial franchise content
Class 6 — The Ten-Step Magazine Self-Critique
Evaluating your own publication can be an impossible task, but THIS session gives you the power! The Ten-Step Critique applies everything from the previous class into a format you can use to evaluate your own publication, and plan a strategy for improvement.
During the class, we will go through a sample critique demonstrating the evaluation criteria and the focus of each step. Following a break, we will conduct short exercises using your own publications to prepare for a fuller, in-house critique that you can conduct yourself.
The critique can answer these questions:
- Is your mission statement well-formed and reflected in your magazine’s content?
- How effective is your template?
- Is your editorial calendar improving your publication?
- Do the navigational elements in your magazine help readers?
- Do your contents page and cover work as hard as they should?
- Are your production standards high enough?
- 15-minute makeover — Your personal To-Do list. Take home ideas that will immediately improve your publication.
More About [FPO] Master Classes
Busy magazine pros have a hard time finding the time or money to take professional enrichment sessions.
FPO Master Classes are created to be convenient to attend and be a clearly justifiable investment.
TAUGHT BY A PRO. Robert Sugar has helped thousands of creatives improve their publications. As President of AURAS Design, he has been responsible for more than 80 designs for a vast array of publishers, and his studio has produced tens of thousands of editorial pages during the studio’s twenty-year history. His knowledge of magazine design from conception to issue-by-issue production is presented in these real-world sessions. His experiences and interests inform the content of FPO Magazine, which he currently publishes and serves as editor.
MASTER CLASSES FIT INTO A BUSY WORKING LIFE. All six classes will be held as an intensive two-day workshop.
LIMITED SIZE FOR UNLIMITED ACCESS. Only 50 registrants will be accepted (first come, first serve!) to facilitate interactivity and personal attention. Each class also includes a catered lunch, as well as plenty of time for questions and conversation. Attendees should bring their magazines and their issues with them.
NETWORK WITH PEERS The Master Classes incorporates suggestions from previous attendees for more discussion, Q&A time and specific critique of your titles in class. After the classes, FPO will be there for you too, answering questions and even critiquing your comps.
SIX MONTHS OF “TECH SUPPORT.” Everyone who attends the sessions will be eligible to continue the conversation that starts at the class. The entire staff of FPO will be available to help with your design and production issues.
Click here to register.