Behind the Scenes of New Tricks
New Tricks
The deadline for submitting to New Tricks, DSU’s literary magazine, might have passed but now the real work begins for the publication team behind it. This year there will be some new features added to New Tricks for people to get excited about. The editors were grateful for all the submissions they received and welcomed the opportunity to choose from so many great works.
New Tricks is on its 22nd year and is still packed to the brim with poetry, prose, art, and even videos. Sponsored by Sigma Tau Delta, New Tricks is published annually by Publishing for New Media students. It started out with just a handful of motivated people collecting and publishing student and faculty works and it has since evolved to include different forms of media. The publishers of New Tricks seek to bring the creative works of students and faculty at DSU into the public eye.
Students in the Publishing for New Media class have been with the magazine from beginning to end, from advertising for submissions to selecting the pieces to include in the magazine. One such member, Katie Miller, was very excited to talk about the process: “I started with the advertising and have followed through with all the editing and promoting. ” She explained how much work has gone into requesting submissions and reviewing the pieces that came in as a result.
The magazine, starting out as a print only version, has in the past few years made leaps into the 21st century with an online website as well as digital forms such as Kindle, ePUB and PDF. This year the editorial staff will also be adding an interactive iBook as well. Brianna Prill, who is working on the iBook format, welcomes the new option. She says, “The most challenging part is trying to figure out how to incorporate the elements not in the print version, like video and audio.” While the Kindle format does not offer these options, the popular Apple iPad does, which will be very exciting for all to experience the new features. Brianna has even figured out a way to add a picture gallery on a single page in which users will click on the pictures to see them represented as the main picture.
The publication team has been broken up into smaller groups, based on their strengths. From HTML to formatting JPEGs to setting up the layout of the print version, everyone is pitching in. Mary Metzger, the website wizard of the team that is building the site with WordPress, is working on making future changes simpler. The most exciting part for her will be the finished product, both online and print.
This year the publication team has also decided to do something that has never been done with the print versions of New Tricks. There will be four pages in the booklet that will be featured in color. The team had to narrow down the list of selected photos to see which photos would be featured on those pages. The team adopted the process of changing all the photos to black and white and then voted on the pictures that needed to be in color in order to keep the depth of the picture.
As everything starts wrapping up with New Tricks, the publication team is busy at work tying up loose ends. Keep your eyes open for this year’s New Tricks release next week! Enjoy, devour, and perpetuate language!
