Good
grief. Has it seriously been a month and a half already? It's sort of shocking the way days, weeks,
months fall out of the year while I'm not looking.
At any rate, here we are in the thick of Winter press week. We're all hustling up and down stairs, passing galleys from desk to desk, having last-minute brainstorms and last-minute panic attacks. For the most part, though, magazine production runs like a well-choreographed football play: Everyone knows what he or she needs to bring to the table to make the group effort successful. There are hiccups here and there, sure - but generally, the process is remarkably smooth.
It's been well-reported that this is my first publishing job. Though I've been working as a freelance writer for several years (and more recently, as a freelance designer), it's true that this is my first time working on the other side of the publishing equation. There's been a pretty steep learning curve associated with it: a whole new industry to learn the ins and outs of, beyond the usual new-job bumps and curveballs. But it's been fascinating, as well - I'm a knitter first, and it took a long time for me to stop geeking out over how cool it is to learn how a knitting magazine works. As we close this issue, I thought I'd share a little bit about the long, long road to press day.
Here's how the timeline works:
7 months out: We concept the issue, developing loose themes for refining later. I'm very focused on making the most of the new format, and finding out what we can do with it - one thing we're trying is structuring the garment "stories" around constructions, techniques, or fibers, with articles that further illuminate the topic. Taken together, they read as little explorations into what a knitter can do with a particular knitting technique, type of sweater, or type of yarn - samplings of the depth and breadth of possibility in handknitting. At this stage, we come up with ideas for story/article pairings that might work - linen yarns? Allover lace? Color work for the summertime? - and send out storyboards to guide and inspire contributors.
Working this far out has a whole host of peculiar problems and challenges. For one thing, it's just plain strange to plan a summer issue when the leaves are falling off the trees, or a winter issue when it's just beginning to warm up and you don't want to think any further than the first jump in the pool. For another, it's scary to take a gamble on what might be hot - color, fiber, silhouette, and knitting-wise - when the magazine finally hits the newsstands half a year later. We do get some help in the form of color, fabric and shape forecasts from the fashion industry, but there's a lot of legwork involved as well: we scour runway shows (what's big in couture one season will trickle down to ready-to-wear by the next year or so), keep up-to-date on emerging fibers, stay current with blogs and web communities. This isn't to say that we're trend-driven, per se: We want our magazine to feel fresh, but to be full of projects that'll be wearable for seasons to come. It can be a hard line to walk!
A few months out: Design submissions come back, and we select projects that we think will be fun to knit, as well as wearable. We look for designs that make great knitting sense: that can mean a perfect marriage of yarn and shape; or elegant ways of solving potential problems; or wonderful details; or unique, effective constructions; or clever ways of incorporating traditional techniques or patterns...it can mean a lot of things. We rework and fine-tune the stories and themes at this point to reflect the best of what we received, contact designers, and order yarns.
To be continued!
Edit: Here's a terrible cell phone cam photo of "my" press day cube (I come to CO for a week or a week and a half for every press day, and camp out in this cube in the
Knits office):
The wall to the left has covers from
Gifts and Fall pinned up, and possible Winter covers in the corner. Below those is the Winter issue's map - the giant puzzle organizing editorial and ads in every issue - and the desk is piled with folders containing the most current version of every spread in the magazine. Not pictured: Me, slightly hyperventilating and with crazy eyes.
