Arts Magazine

I recently created an arts magazine which displayed work from students and a few professors. It was about 80 pages long and featured two short stories, a handful of poems, photographs, paintings, and other artwork done in both traditional forms and digitally. I had originally wanted to also do reviews of a few plays, musicals and concerts but sadly events beyond my control prevented these last few additions. The whole project was one big learning experience. One thing I couldn’t get over was how much disrespect people had for their own work.

I’ll begin with the written pieces. When it comes to spelling and grammar, I am quite aware that I frequently mess up which is part of the reason I love spell check so much. I couldn’t get over how many of the submitted pieces had spelling errors, etc. which I was able to catch simply by skimming the page. I know it is easy to become so close to your piece that you miss the mistakes, but there are some mistakes that are so glaringly obvious that I fail to see how one can miss them in a piece one wants the public to read.

Nobody had to submit written work for the magazine. They choose to do so which means they weren’t just submitting any old piece to fulfill their commitment. These were the pieces they wanted to represent their work. I’d hate to see some of the junk pieces.

I also couldn’t get over how many artists and designers messed up their image files. I had graphic design majors submitting work at 72 dpi (dots per inch) and only a couple inches large. While the optimal setting for each type of printer can vary, generally one wants somewhere around 300 - 360 dpi for print. 72 dpi looks fine on screen, but comes out awful in print – especially if the image then has to be enlarged.

I can kind of understand some of the artists and photographers making this mistake if they haven’t had much of a digital background, but if they wish to submit work online in the future they need to figure this one out really fast. I do know some of the photos were submitted because a professor made his class do so, but I also am sure he explained the difference between screen quality and print quality.

If you want others to respect your work, you first have to respect it yourself.