Where the focus is on your story
  • Home
  • Our Story
  • Services
  • Contact
  • Portfolio
  • Testimonials
  • Updates
  • Publishing

TELL ME A STORY: MONTANA QUARTERLY

4/13/2017

3 Comments

 
Picture
Montana Quarterly magazine is one of the true treasures of the state we live in. And we're not alone in counting ourselves lucky to have it. If not for the vision and gumption of longtime Montana journalist Scott McMillion, it would no longer be with us.

A few years ago, the Quarterly's previous operator, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, was poised to shutter the magazine in a cost-cutting move. McMillion, who'd been a senior writer with the Chronicle and a regular Quarterly contributor, stepped in with some investors and rescued it from the scrap heap, never missing an issue. In the summer of 2013, as Craig was preparing to leave daily newspaper work for a full-time writing and freelance career, he signed on with McMillion as the magazine's design director. He'd already been an occasional contributor of short stories, and he relished the chance to join the masthead.

They've been at it ever since.

Here, then, is Craig, with the rest of the story...

The reason the Quarterly cuts such a distinctive figure in Montana is that no other magazine in the state—and there are many—does exactly what it does. The magazine's central mission rests on two tent poles.

The first is that it produces deep, meaningful journalism about real life here, and it does so in a broad way—daring, inventive writing; stunning photography; a beneath-the-surface approach to storytelling where it doesn't so much tell you the what of the news but the why. Your daily newspaper can tell you something happened. The Quarterly will dedicate the space and the resources to explaining it.

Second, the Quarterly takes seriously its place in the arts and letters of the state. Every issue includes an author profile and a short story. Some include poems. Artists well-known and obscure are profiled. Every serious bookstore in the state sells the Quarterly, because the magazine means something vital to those stores' customers. And McMillion invests in the coming generation of writers through offering annual Big Snowy Prizes in nonfiction and fiction, work by young Montanans that gets the star treatment in the magazine every summer.

Here's a selection of page spreads from past issues of the magazine. Note how the presentation of the magazine is driven by the words and the images, as any well-designed publication should be. We endeavor for a clean, quiet look, one where there are no look-at-me design flourishes, because they're not necessary. The work of Montana's finest writers, photographers, and artists does all the talking.

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Another reason for the success of the Quarterly, I think, is that McMillion is committed to continually putting out a superior product in print even as the world of daily journalism increasingly shifts to online. He has avoided the great conundrum of the daily newspaper, where most of the money is made in print (although less and less every quarter) while most of the readership gains are online. The Quarterly, not tethered to that daily reality, preserves itself as an experience best left to the tactile pleasures of reading on paper. And unlike the daily newspaper, which is fodder for recycling every 24 hours, research shows that the Quarterly's readers keep the issues long after they come out, returning again and again to the top-notch writing and the arresting photography. That's good news for us at the magazine, and good news for our advertisers, who can see the benefits of their ad buy paying off for months or years after the fact.

Working on the Quarterly—now 15 issues and counting for me—has been a singular joy in my professional career. It brings together a place I love and work I'm passionate about doing, all under the auspices of a magazine that I believe in. Every quarter, as I hunker down on another issue, I think I must be the luckiest guy around, getting to work with the best writers, thinkers, and artists my state has to offer.

​You know what? I'm right.

Got a favorite magazine? Tell us all about it in the comments section.

Are you a Montanan, or a Montanan at heart? Consider subscribing to Montana Quarterly. You'll love it.
3 Comments

ANATOMY OF A BOOK COVER: JULEP STREET

4/10/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Welcome to the first in an occasional series of posts where we'll look at the elements of effective print design. Our first guinea pig, conveniently, is the next book we'll be releasing through our Missouri Breaks Press imprint: Julep Street, Craig's seventh novel. So, without further ado, here it is:

Julep Street will be released on May 9. And while there are certain creative advantages to an author doing his own design work, settling on a presentation for this book did not come without challenges. For one thing, it's an intensely interior work of fiction; most of the struggles of the protagonist, laid-off newspaper editor Carson McCullough, are against his own sense of regret, loss, and mortality. While there's no shortage of action, most of the physicality is born of Carson's interior degradation. And that can be a difficult theme to capture in any sort of overt way.

When we found this luminous photo of a bridge by Greg Kushmerek, we knew we had a winner. It's almost the perfect image for a book cover, with light and dark to provide contrast with the type. It's alluring (god, that lighting on the undercarriage of the bridge). Thematically, it's a strong fit, too. The bridge in the unnamed, fictitious Kentucky town where Carson lives has literal and metaphorical resonance in his life and in his story. It's the way out that he never took. It's also the vantage point for all the perspective he never appreciated.

For any book that's going to be sold in bookstores and online--and that's pretty much any book—cover creation comes with some built-in practical considerations. The design has to be eye-grabbing enough to demand attention at full size and color. And it has to communicate quickly in an online world where it appears at thumbnail size and often in black-and-white.

Let's see how the Julep Street cover stacks up in the latter environment:

Picture
OK, so in black-and-white, it's a dark cover (hard not to be when the image is a nighttime shot). But it's leavened considerably by the lighter movement of the bridge and by the white typography that still pops hard off the image. While nothing beats the gorgeous lighting and contrast of the full-color image, the black-and-white thumbnail version serves its main purpose: to stop a potential reader and say, "Hey, take a closer look at me."

Let's talk a bit about typography

In designing a book cover, the font the designer chooses, the size at which it's rendered, the color, the treatment (lowercase, small caps, all capital letters, whatever) all communicate something about what's on the pages inside.

For Julep Street, we wanted simplicity and elegance. It's a work of commercial fiction, but with a literary bent, so we chose a font (Bodoni Book, one of Craig's favorites) that is clean and well-weighted, that has an elegant italic option (see the lovely endorsement by Louise Beech), and doesn't lose its attractiveness at a larger size.

For a book with a different tone, a different font choice would have been in order. Consider how the combination of typography and imagery helps sell these books, all from different genres and all by authors we greatly admire:
Picture
Notice how everything works together to convey a strong sense of what's inside, whether it's romance, adventure, danger, the seamy underbelly of the city, or the poetry of the physical world. The B.J. Daniels book, for instance, is upfront in its intention to court readers of romance: Here's a strapping young cowboy who'd be fun in the sack (hey, why be coy?). Contrast that with the cover for Allen Morris Jones's A Bloom of Bones, a literary novel of quiet lyricism. All five of these covers are effective ambassadors for the work within.

We'd like to think we achieved the same objective with Julep Street: that if you pick up this book, you're going to bear witness to a work that is, in the words of Louise Beech, "full of gorgeous shade and light."

What's your favorite book cover, and why did it resonate with you? Tell us about it in the comments.

Do you have a design project that needs to communicate clearly with its audience? Contact us today. We'd love to work with you.
0 Comments

New Course at This House of Books: How To Write a Memorable Memoir

4/5/2017

0 Comments

 
It’s been said that everyone has a personal story to tell, but what makes a memoir truly memorable? In this four-week course, Elisa Lorello, author of the memoir Friends of Mine: Thirty Years in the Life of a Duran Duran Fan, will teach you how to bridge the past with the present to get to the heart of your memoir, as well as how to bring your story to life with sensory details, dialogue, voice, and more. Weekly activities and discussions will put you on the path to writing a meaningful memoir that will connect with readers.

Date: Tuesdays, May 9 – May 30
Time: 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Place: This House of Books, 224 N. Broadway
Cost: $149.99 (you save $50.00!) – pay upon arrival (check, cash, or card accepted)

You can sign up at This House of Books or contact Elisa.

Picture
0 Comments

    Our Purpose

    We're in the business of telling stories, across a wide range of media. Here's how we do what we do.

    Archives

    April 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017

    Categories

    All
    Authors
    Books
    Business Writing
    Classes
    Copy Editing
    Cover Design
    Craig Lancaster
    Daniel Boucher
    Devlopmental Editing
    Editing
    Editors
    Elisa Lorello
    Glenn Burkey
    Lancarello Enterprises
    Magazines
    Memoir
    Michael DiLeo
    Novella
    Novels
    Page Design
    Photography
    Proofreading
    Publishing
    Revision
    Richard S. Wheeler
    Social Media Content
    Story
    Storytelling
    Teaching
    The Writer's Habit
    This House Of Books
    Writing
    Writing Process

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Our Story
  • Services
  • Contact
  • Portfolio
  • Testimonials
  • Updates
  • Publishing