Sharing My Story

My work with the Worldwide Challenge Art Team
consisted of a number of tasks. Here are the steps
we used in order to put the magazine together.

1. The beginning of our monthly job dealt with
receiving finished manuscripts from the Editorial
Dept. Each artist would take the copies of the
articles and read them and come up with ideas
on how to illustrate them.

2. After several days the art team (often with
sketches or drawings) met with several of the
editors and we pitched our illustration ideas
in a brainstorming session. The brainstorming
session was a cut session where many concepts
were eliminated. While all ideas have merit you
learned not to fall to deeply in love with a specific
concept. Many of the articles in the magazine had
to do with abstract spiritual concepts that don't
always readily avail themselves to easy illustration
concepts. Personality or ministry event stories
were the easiest to work with.

3. Once the idea was agreed on by the editors
and designers the transforming of that idea into
illustration or photograph was the next step.

4. If it was a photo we worked with one of Campus
Crusade staff photographers to schedule a photo
shoot. Often we needed to recruit models for the
photos and we had a large pool of available staff
and family members to choice from.

5. We also did illustrations when the article called
for it. The designers, most of whom had illustration
skills, took turns on doing the illustrations depending
on whose style fit the project idea the best.

6. Once the illustrations were chosen the magazine
was divided up into sections among the designers to
do the layouts for. Each designer was given a specific
number of pages with either a right hand lead page
or a left-right spread. The News section of the magazine
was done usually by one designer which dealt mostly
with columns of type and event or people photos.

7. The layouts were first done as thumbnail sketches
with measurements from the typeset galleys. Once the
thumbnails were approved by the art director then the
designer would take photo copies of the galleys and
make a dummy mock-up of the layout showing where
the copy flows and where the photos or illustrations
were located. The layouts were all incorporated with
a single mock-up magazine or dummy which the art
director and chief editor would approval or ask
for changes.

8. During this time photo shoots were scheduled and
illustrations drawn. Once the finished mock-up was
approved the designers took the typeset copy and
begin pasting it up on pre-sized layout boards.

9. Once the paste up was done it was proof read by
several of the editors and corrections were typeset
and pasted on the boards and then these corrections
were approved by the editors.

10. Once final approval was given including any artwork
and photos the art boards were sent to a pre-press
house for the negative flats to be done. They provided
a blueline or dummy copy of the magazine for one final
proofing before it was sent to the printer.

11. Once the final blueline proofing done (with any
last corrections) it was sent to an outside printer
specializing in magazine printing. Several weeks later
we would receive copies of the magazines.

This was my daily work experience from 1976 to
1980. We had an outside type house do our typesetting.
With the advent of desktop publishing a number
of years later the need for outside typesetting and
even paste up was eliminated. For those designers
who made the transition from rubber cement paste up
on art boards to designing your layouts on the
computer screen the old days are not missed. The old
paste up methods seem almost medieval in comparison.
Digital technology has changed things radically in
the graphic design industry.