Manuscripts to Magazines

Site Report

The purpose of our site is to assist writers in their attempts to publish work in magazines. Often never-published writers are unaware of procedures involved with preparing and submitting manuscripts.

Design and the User

We began with what we thought was logical a layout. We were aware that users were likely to arrive at our site with varying objectives and prior information, so we elected to make the main page a menu page. Our site became interest-based: users could choose their topic.

Design and the Content

We were forced to change the design due to content issues. During initial design mapping, we categorized our content in specific ways that affected design. For instance, Submission Sites were categorized into magazine groups: local, national, and global. While this seemed a logical way of ordering the magazines, we began to ask ourselves questions. Local in relation to what or whom? Who we are? Did we need or want to introduce such information? No, we decided that it was unecessary and distracting to the user.We re-categorized the submission site pages in order to avoid the question of geography.

A large part of our site design had been structured around three separate genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) thinking that this too would help users find what they need. Also, we thought it would be logical and easy to navigate. That worked well until we completed our content research. It was then that we discovered that the bulk of our information was not where we planned for it to be. Worse, information regarding the three genres was so similar that we could not justify arranging the site around them. Each page would have been repetitive and confusing for users. After all, why create separate pages if the information is the same? Again, we redesigned.

Design and Epiphany

After this painful process, we discovered a wonderful thing: the re-categorization and subsequent restructure of content ended in better suiting the site’s purpose because users will not have to look within a genre to find more general information.

Designer Delegation

As a group working on a project of seemingly gigantic proportions, we did have a bit of difficulty. It was difficult to delegate the workload when we weren’t entirely sure what that was. It changed almost daily. We e-mailed each other with information and conferred about our purpose and design during class time.

• Jason researched fiction
• Sadie researched nonfiction
• Audrey researched poetry and tackled the computer stuff

Due Day

Manuscripts to Magazines remains under construction. Attempts at finishing were slow and slower. And there we are. With more time we would add much:

• another column for submissions on the left of each page so that the catagory does not hang loosely from the bottom of the menu page
• a navigation bar labeled with each page, allowing users access to the entire site from each page
• extensive listings for submissions sites and resources

I don't have anymore time to say what I would do with more time...

Sister Sites

Primarily a menu site, Writer's/Photographer's Guidelines provided ideas regarding our main page--an interest-based menu page. Further, this site includes guidelines to specific magazines. We also plan to incorporate this idea under 'examples.'

The Magazine Guidelines Database, while not exactly a 'how to' site, possess related information, arranged in a manner similar to ours. We did decide to place general information within the main menu section and specific information catagorized to either side.