About New Tricks




     Every Spring, the Publishing for New Media class at Dakota State University begins the publication process for a new issue of New Tricks.

Task Allocation

     The process begins by the class discussing the various tasks that will need to be completed to keep the publication on track. This includes creating a list of advertising, editing, designing and printing tasks as well as creating a time line of when these tasks will need to be completed and when the project will be finished.

Advertising

     Advertising takes place in the first part of the semester. The students create posters and other marketing projects to gain submissions. After submissions have been gathered, the team meets up with members of Sigma Tau Delta to begin the review process.

Reviewing Submissions

     The editorial board is given the list of pieces and print outs of the pieces to review and vote on. Once the voting process begins, the pieces are scored and the Publishing class decided based on these scores, which pieces will be published in the new issue and online. The individuals who had submitted to New Tricks are notified at this time as to which of their pieces are going to be published.

Editing

     At this point the real publishing work begins. The pieces are divided up among the Publishing class to be edited. Each piece is reviewed together between the creator and editor to make sure that any errors in the piece are corrected. Editing can include discussing the options between black and white photos or colored, or grammar and punctuation errors, or even rewording or reworking sentence structures.

Design & Layout for Publications

     During the editing process, other students in the Publishing class work on the design layout for the printed issue and the Website. The book is usually designed through InDesign. The student creates themes for the headers and footers and page titles as well as general layouts for how the poetry and short stories will be formatted. They also add in the introduction and acknowledgement pages of the book. The website designer creates the online version of the book to host the published works on. They create formatting options for the various pieces and arrange the pages and pieces so that it is easy to navigate through.

Finalization

     Finally, once editing is done, the pieces are inserted into the locations they will be published. The book and website go through a final proofreading stage where the editors go through the publications with “a fine tooth comb” to catch any last minute mistakes.

Publication

     Once the book is ready for publication, it is sent to the Dakota State publishing house for printing. A launch party is scheduled to celebrate the publication of the book and to offer a place for the DSU community to see the art work and photography displayed and to listen to the written works being performed by the authors.