DLa News

Creating DLa 23, Part 2: Collecting Content

News from Sunday, August 17, 2008 @ 9:35 AM, PST

In this second post in our series, Creating DLa 23, we discuss the process whereby submissions and other issue content were collected for the project. This may seem like an insignificant part of the process, but with copious content from each of the eight core artists, this was one of the most challenging aspects of the entire affair.

Once the call went out that Ron was orchestrating a new, full-size issue of Dead Letter Art, there was an enthusiastic response from nearly all of the core members. There were also five “guest contributors” interested in submitting content. Thus, within days of Ron’s announcement, content for DLa #23 began pouring in..

For past issues of DLa, we usually found ourselves with plenty of content to produce a 30-page zine quite easily. Not every member would always share content, but even so, we generally would find ourselves with a good two to six submissions from each contributor. After all the content was collected, we would then tie it all together with various thematic elements, words and imagery.

This time, however, things were different. This time, it was announced that the issue was to printed in full color, with plush softcover binding and the whole bit. As soon as members and contributors realized this, the content began to flow. After all, nearly every other issue we had ever produced was almost entirely in black-&-white. The opportunity to see some of our recent werks published in full color inspired many of us to submit much more than usual.

Currently, many of the core DLa members are located in different cities. We have Kalacakra, Sui Lan and Osseus residing in Seattle, ThaneC living in Portland, FCU keeping it real in Spokane (and currently, Saudi Arabia), and the rest of us chilling in Moses Lake. This locational disparity proved challenging throughout the production process, requiring us to resynchronize and streamline a reasonably effective content delivery and communication protocol. Relying on email, snail mail, FTP, and hand-delivered hardcopies (guess who), all content was eventually delivered, collected and organized.

Reviewing the content submission process, there were several things that worked well, and several things that failed to benefit the effort. The things that worked well (for future reference) involved setting deadlines, using file-naming protocols, and consolidating emails into a minimal number of threads. Things that would have improved the process include having contributors send all content at the same time, setting limits to the number of contributions, and pre-formatting as much content as possible.

Although the content collection and organization process continued throughout the duration of the project, within a few weeks we had received a substantial majority of the art, photos, words, and other content that would eventually appear in the issue. When it was all said and done, the content archive for DLa 23 topped 500 files, organized in more than 25 folders. This was far more content than we had anticipated, and the work of organizing and preparing the content had just begun..

Next in the Creating DLa 23 series: “Part 3: Content Preparation”

Posted by:   Perishable [ Edited on: 08/31/08 ] | [ 0 ] Leave a Comment »

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