Month 1: Introduction to Course—Selecting Class Projects, Staff Organization, Mission of Magazines/Webzines

Assignment: Identify 5 examples of magazines/webzines with particular missions. Identify the mission and how the magazine/webzine achieves or fails to achieve that mission. Post your links or analysis on MyHeritage Forums.

Assignment: Invent a hypothethical magazine. Choose appropriate mission, theme, etc. Then select four (4) poems and one (1) article or short story and “deselect” four (4) poems and one (1) article or short story, some from print sources and some from electronic sources. Briefly explain your magazine and its mission, the selection criteria, and how the chosen poems/stories/articles fit and the others do not. Be sure to provide the poems and a brief summary of the stories or articles for the class to peruse.

Month 1, Continued. Design—Basic Tools

Assignment: Wordprocessing Exercise.

Month 2. Working with the “Talent” and Legal/Ethical Issues in Publishing.

Assignment: Professional Ethics Assignment. Post your answers to the copyright questions and your analysis on the ethics questions on MyHeritage.

Assignment: Designing Response Letters. Write a sample acceptance letter, a provisional acceptance letter, and a rejection letter.

Month 2, Continued. Introduction to Pagemaker and PageMill (or other approved HTML-editing software) (or other DTP or Webpublishing software ). Learning to Evaluate. Evaluation/Selection of Submissions as Needed (depends on projects selected).

Assignment: Work through the Poetry Evaluation Assignment. Post your examples and comments on MyHeritage.

Month 2, Continued. Evaluation/Selection of Submissions as Needed.

Assignment: Work through PageMaker (or other approved DTP software) tutorials and WWW Assignment. Upload to MyHeritage.

Month 3. Working with Fonts, Layout, and Graphics.

Assignment: Select appropriate text and headline fonts for assigned or original projects. Save samples of your selected fonts as graphics (by typing into your graphics program and then saving the graphic). Briefly explain the rationale for each choice and upload to MyHeritage.

Assignment: Create sample page using shaded and bordered textbox with drop shadows.

Month 3, Continued. Working with Graphics.

Assignment: Scan or locate assigned pictures/photos or pictures/photos for your project if none assigned. Place in publication, re-size, and crop as appropriate. Add captions as necessary. Upload to MyHeritage.

Assignment: Bring in two (2) examples of good page layouts and two (2) examples of bad print page layouts and be prepared to explain why you consider them good/bad. Link or upload to MyHeritage.

Month 3, Continued. Working with Layout and Graphics—What NOT to Do. Introduction to Webpublishing.

Assignment: As manuscript data is entered, begin to edit your assigned or original pieces.

Assignment: Post links to two (2) examples of good webpage layouts and two (2) examples of bad webpages. Link or upload to MyHeritage.

Final Weeks, Applying Your Knowledge. Final Production.

Assignment: Lay out any assigned web or webzine pieces as appropriate.

Assignment: Submit any assigned DTP or Webpublishing work (chapbook pages, etc.) which is due by posting on MyHeritage.

Assignment: Final Production for other projects.

Assignment: Design and begin to distribute publicity for projects as appropriate.