Wednesday, October 19, 2005

ANTIGRAVITY GETS A NEW LIFE (OR: IT'S TIME TO GET BUSY AGAIN)

I FINALLY found a new printer for AntiGravity yesterday. After getting dicked around by a couple of printers in Baton Rouge (one left multiple messages unreturned, another had me speak to a rep who was supposedly working on my quote at that moment, and even though she claimed I would have it by yesterday afternoon it's nearly 9 a.m. and I still don't have it) I e-mailed Joele from the magazine Alternatives, and she pointed me towards Print All in Belle Chasse.

I talked to the owner of Print All and they have some very good prices, pretty quick turnaround, and they actually spoke to me (which compared to the printers in Baton Rouge makes them great). All that sound too good to not have catches? Well, yeah.

Before Katrina we'd decided to increase our format from 8x10 to about 10x11, starting with our October issue. We thought it'd give us a more "magazine" look, if that makes sense, and I was beginning to feel the strain of designing 8x10 pages. There's only so much you can do with a page like that.

When Dixie Web was closed and I scrambled to find a new printer, I figured that we might have to do newsprint for awhile because it's just so much cheaper. One of the "catches" about Print All is that they're cheapest because their base size is the tabloid format, which means our new final size will be about 11 1/4 x 13 7/8. Pretty much double our previous size. In one way it's good because we have more space to deal with, but I'm just not a big fan of that size (though it's probably because I haven't seen many publications worth reading at that size. The old ARTHUR magazine comes to mind, but that's about it). I'm sure it'll grow on me when I see our stuff printed.

Also, they don't bind anything at Print All, so the magazine will be like reading a newspaper, not stapled or anything. Another thing I'm not a big fan of, but I'll deal with it. I'd rather deal with these things than not publish, so we'll stick with this format for at least six months and then reevaluate our printing situation. Maybe another one comes along equally as good, maybe we stick with them because we grow to like that format. Who knows.

But it's exciting to get to work again, and that's what I did last night and probably will do for most of today.
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