The Fall CALYX Glitterati is celebrating Frida Kahlo’s art and Dia de los muertos (October 21st, Corvallis Arts Center), and as I was looking through old files searching for extra copies of the artist Frida Kahlo’s color plates that we published in the International Anthology I was digging through dusty files in the back room. This resulted in an impromptu lesson to staff and interns on the history of publication layout. I actually don’t remember the exact date we switched to laying out publications completely on the computer. But as I pulled out the complicated cover layouts—hand done in the days before art was handled from computer images—the layers of plastic and instructions for each layer of color were a surprise for the younger staff and interns—particularly the mathematical computations that had to be done for each piece of art. Most surprising was recognizing my handwriting on some of the covers, having forgotten I often had to lay out covers myself.
Kelsey (Assistant Director) and Meghan (intern) with Women and Aging publication layout
Life is so much easier with computerized cover design. As we finalized the cover art and design for the new book Crow Mercies (by Penelope Schott), Cheryl McLean (of Imprint Service who does our production and design) sent 4 variations on 3 different pieces of art for our final consideration. Our Senior Editor watched Cheryl do the magical design and said some of the variations took place in minutes. What a difference from the days we did all those mathematical computations, cut out the red gelatin borders, and wrote instructions to the printer on each page of the layout.
Different alternatives for the cover of Crow Mercies
~Margarita Donnelly, Director
