Launching a quarterly magazine in college - help!

[samarjeetsaigal]

Hi Friends,
First of all-I m sorry if this thread is posted in the wrong section.
I need your suggestions, so please do help me.

i had just entered into 3rd yr. Mechanical and i want that there should be a departmental magazine issued quaterly in a year, as there is no such departmental magazines issued till now. i m dead sure that my HOD will be with me. So please help me out by suggesting me that what are needs to get this successful and which should be included in it and upto what extent.

I want this to be possible as it will keep all my mechanical friends updated and will help them in gaining some knowledge.

So help me make this thing possible.

[The_Big_K]

Wow, I'm glad to see someone on CE doing this! While I've few things to say, expect a response from Mr. Mayur Pathak (our editor-in-chief) who used to be on editorial team during his college days & his team did a fantastic job (every year!).

We also have Patty (CE - Editor) , who's on the editorial team of his college magazine, who can help you with your magazine.

Here we go -

1. First of all, make sure that you have a permission to launch departmental magazine from everyone who is concerned (possibly, Principal & HOD)

2. Next, form a core team of people who are passionate about launching the magazine & making it successful in the department. Make sure you only have PASSIONATE (all caps!) people in the magazine team; otherwise the whole magazine thing will go from being fun to being pain in bum.

PS: Be careful. There are tons of people who want an extra bullet under 'extra-curricular' activities section on their resume.

3. Once the team is formed - decide who's going to do what. Let the team members volunteer. The aim is not to come up with a 50 page glossy magazine. I'd rather say, make it a 5 - 8 page magazine and load it with lot of good content!

4. Announce the launch of magazine in department and ask for articles, interesting project reports, tips & tricks etc. to all the students. Get your juniors working ( )on writing articles & collecting stuff from internet. Tell them NOT TO COPY original/copyrighted stuff from the Internet. Encourage originality. If department permits, launch a small competition for 'best article', 'best submission' etc.

5. Try to get that shiny laser printer in HOD's department to print your magazine .

6. Do not forget to ask your HOD & Principal to write guest columns in your magazine and make sure that they appear on the first 2 pages; for obvious reasons.

7. Interview the most popular professor in your department & also try to get a local famous personality (preferably related to mechanical engineering) to write something for you; if not, interview him/her

8. Most importantly :- Write an article about CrazyEngineers! Our editorial team will definitely help you to write an article about us !

9. Share your progress & success story with us so that we all are more proud of having you on CE!

What I've written above is the overview of things you will be / should be doing for your magazine.

All the best! We all look forward to hearing from you!

[Thread moved to General Help section & Titled changed to something better ]

[samarjeetsaigal]

Originally Posted by The_Big_K

Wow, I'm glad to see someone on CE doing this! While I've few things to say, expect a response from Mr. Mayur Pathak (our editor-in-chief) who used to be on editorial team during his college days & his team did a fantastic job (every year!).

We also have Patty (CE - Editor) , who's on the editorial team of his college magazine, who can help you with your magazine.

Here we go -

1. First of all, make sure that you have a permission to launch departmental magazine from everyone who is concerned (possibly, Principal & HOD)

2. Next, form a core team of people who are passionate about launching the magazine & making it successful in the department. Make sure you only have PASSIONATE (all caps!) people in the magazine team; otherwise the whole magazine thing will go from being fun to being pain in bum.

PS: Be careful. There are tons of people who want an extra bullet under 'extra-curricular' activities section on their resume.

3. Once the team is formed - decide who's going to do what. Let the team members volunteer. The aim is not to come up with a 50 page glossy magazine. I'd rather say, make it a 5 - 8 page magazine and load it with lot of good content!

4. Announce the launch of magazine in department and ask for articles, interesting project reports, tips & tricks etc. to all the students. Get your juniors working ( )on writing articles & collecting stuff from internet. Tell them NOT TO COPY original/copyrighted stuff from the Internet. Encourage originality. If department permits, launch a small competition for 'best article', 'best submission' etc.

5. Try to get that shiny laser printer in HOD's department to print your magazine .

6. Do not forget to ask your HOD & Principal to write guest columns in your magazine and make sure that they appear on the first 2 pages; for obvious reasons.

7. Interview the most popular professor in your department & also try to get a local famous personality (preferably related to mechanical engineering) to write something for you; if not, interview him/her

8. Most importantly :- Write an article about CrazyEngineers! Our editorial team will definitely help you to write an article about us !

9. Share your progress & success story with us so that we all are more proud of having you on CE!

What I've written above is the overview of things you will be / should be doing for your magazine.

All the best! We all look forward to hearing from you!

[Thread moved to General Help section & Titled changed to something better ]

thank you very much....
You had made me a inspired about this, so i will get this done definately and will keep the s updated about this.

[yudi]

want to add in to K's reply

>>throw some publicity/campaigning kinda activity just before the launch.
>>try to include more departments of ur colloge in further editions
(why keep other engineers apart from this).
>>must appoint some true/genuine people in your core team so as to
avoid further conflicts.
>>SPECIFY CE(www.crazyengineers.com) in your magzine.

[AbraKadabra]

On 14th August 2008, we unveiled our first copy of a computer technology magazine called "The Byte taste the technology" in our department.

I was on the editorial team.
So, I guess that my recent experience might be of some help to you.

We needed around 1 and 1/2 month to build the magazine from scratch.
Our team was of 12 persons (all were newbies )
So, with the guidance of our H.O.D we started working on it's creation.

First and foremost was the name of the Magazine and its "Theme" (i.e. the basic idea behind it or the way we wanted it to look like)

P.S. We held a competition within the dept. to choose a suitable name(which received a wide response)

After that, we came up with the section-names. For e.g. Tech-check, View the review, Choke Jokes, Small polls, Know more, Puzzles etc.

Later, we started the big quest or the hunt for articles.
(As this was the first magazine, all were reluctant or ignorant to contribute.) So, we came up with an idea to announce a technical essay competition which would receive a cash prize from the dept. This idea encouraged many to come forward and give articles.

The big question was that of the funds!
But (much to our surprise) our college gave the sanction of the required amount for the first issue (on a condition that we have to do the printing at the college's regular printing press. )
So, from the next time we will need sponsorship.

After collecting articles, we proceeded towards designing.
Though some printing presses do this work for you at cheap rates, we did it ourselves. We had to use Corel Draw for the final edited soft-copy. (that's the format needed by the press)

As Biggie mentioned, we included a message from both: the principal & H.O.D. right on the front few pages.
We also included the news about the latest departmental activities and photos supporting them.

On permission from the admin, we also printed the interview of Mr. Yashwant Kanetkar in our mag. with Welcome to the world of Crazy Engineers! on the top of the page in bold.

In printing, we used 90 gsm paper for the front and back cover pages, while 70 gsm for inner pages. The outer pages are glossy.

The magazine is of total 22 pages (including the cover page)
We plan to expand the scope of our magazine in the next issue.

Best of Luck for the creation of your departmental magazine!
Keep us updated about your experience.

[ash]

Thanks for that, AbraKadabra Congrats on the first issue!