Design consultancies and courses

The Editorial Centre offers a flexible service for even the tightest budget. We can offer a full redesign or a workshop to set your staff on the road to a full relaunch. An effective way to start is to commission a report into the design of your title. The services offered below are our most popular. However all of these can be tailored to meet your needs and your pocket. 

Full redesign

 
Stage 1: Initial meeting with editor/MD/senior executives

We pick the brains of the senior executives on content and design issues; we examine any research, demographic information, strategy and analyse the responses to a series of redesign questions. These questions are sent to you as a Word document for completion by the senior management team. 

Stage 2:  Presentation of initial visuals

We draw up a series of visuals for all pages of the publication. There is a range of visuals ie several fronts; different inside/advertising styles etc. These are boarded up and a presentation, followed by discussion, is held to the management team and, if required, the staff. 

Stage 3: Amendments carried out

You retain the visuals and advise us on those elements you prefer and would like to develop. We carry out amendments and send pages as PDFs. This process continues until you are 100 per cent happy with the outcome.

 
Stage 4: Templating and training

Once you are satisfied with the new-look the pages they are presented to you on disk. We then come to your offices for two days to template the pages on to your system, train your layout subs in the new design and provide you with style guidelines.

Additional services:  In addition you might also want us to produce a dummy to be printed, organise and carry out your research, carry out the marketing (both internally and externally) for the changes and provide a timetable for change. We can also look after the editing, design, printing and distribution of the title.

Setting a style

 
As above but you identify ten key pages that need most attention (front, inside, advertising etc). We would then create new pages and would send them to you. Once you were happy with the outcome the pages would be presented on a disk.

Redesigning the newspaper/magazine course

Redesign workshop

Some titles and groups  (Northcliffe newspapers, the Sunderland Echo, Irish Post and Guernsey Press) have chosen this option. You hire us for a week to work with your key people and produce a series of visuals. The beauty of this approach is that the people on the title declare ownership of the design right at the beginning. We can do this at the Editorial Centre's offices (which are kitted out with G4 Macs, PCs, Quark 4.11, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and a full range of founts) or in your offices.  There are two trainers  - a designer and a graphic artist. The people you sent would need to be prepared to work late into the evening. At the end the pages are presented in hard copy form, on disk and style guidelines are provided.

Design report

These are just a snapshot of what we can offer.  Essentially we can be as flexible as you need us to be. A good starting point can be to have a report prepared on the strengths and weaknesses of the title. This is a very detailed report that looks at all aspects of the publication's content and design and makes recommendations as to what needs to be done. If you would like to begin with this (it commits you to nothing further) we would need six recent copies of the title plus any other relevant information (research, demographics, strategy, answers to the redesign questions etc).

Courses

Peter Sands and his team run courses on sub-editing, layout and design, redesigning the newspaper, magazine design, headline writing, use of colour, pictures on a page, typography, advertising design, QuarkXpress, Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photohsop