News and events

Mailing your publication

On May 24, Lorna Funk (mail services), Peter Klit (printing services) and Trish Vollmann (Canada Post commercial sales rep) led an informative session on planning your large mailings.

Kudos

The Restoration of Natural Systems diploma program brochure, designed and produced by Michael Turner, division of continuing studies promotion and publications unit, has won first place in the small brochure category from the Canadian Association for University Continuing Education (CAUCE).

UVic Report 2004, produced by UVic communications with project management by Robie Liscomb and design by Malahat Group International, has earned the gold award from the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education for best institutional annual report in Canada.

The UVic Torch alumni magazine, edited by the alumni office’s Mike McNeney and designed by Rayola Design, has earned a bronze medal in the best magazine category from the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education.

Print Buying

On April 12, Ken Babich and Colleen McIlveen of Purchasing Services discussed print quotes and dealing with off-campus printers.

Refreshing Your Publications

On March 23, Bruno Rocca, Melana Mar, Paula Ceroni and Jennifer Chapman of Student Recruitment and Admissions shared their experience of refreshing and renewing their suite of publications.

UVic Printshop Tour

On Feb. 9, Printing & Duplicating Services manager Peter Klit conducted our group on a tour of the UVic print shop, including a demo of their new Xerox DocuColor 5252 digital printer.

Effective Photo Shoots

On Jan 20, Amanda Maslany, senior art director at Malahat Group International, and Diana Nethercott, photojournalist extraordinaire and teacher in the writing department, presented practical info on how to prepare for, art direct and otherwise get the most out of photo shoots.

Print Publications and the Web

On Dec. 16 UVic Web Co-ordinator Rogier Gruys and information architect Faye Hoffman discussed how to make the best use of the web for posting your publications.

Designing for the Web, by Rogier Gruys (pdf)

Writing for the Web, by Faye Hoffman (pdf)

Publications Group Minutes

5 October 2004

Attending: Susan Corner (Dispute Resolution), Leanne Dmyterko (Communications workstudy), Student Services), Leslie Kenny (Religion & Society), Robie Liscomb (Comnmunications), Bruno Rocca (Student Recruitment), Ann Tanner (Theatre), Megan Gerla (Theatre workstudy)

We had a lively discussion of how the group could help us produce more effective publications.

The group could help serve our professional development needs, serve as a forum to raise issues of common concern, and act as a mechanism to achieve better integration and coordination of our publications. The current integrated marketing/strategic communications planning process is expected to produce recommendations for increased coordination of the various publications (both in terms of messaging and look-and-feel).

We quickly reviewed the UVic Publications Resources website, in particular the Imagebank. Photo Services will be joining in the imagebank system, and Leanne and Robie will work with them to coordinate systems and ensure that efficient searches of both databases of images can be done.

Ideas for further initiatives included:

• Workshop on basic editing and 'beyond the basics' of editing (possibly in conjunction with the launch of a UVic editorial style guide)
• Workshop on how to refresh a 'tired' publication
• Brownbag lunch meetings (monthly?) on such topics as posting publications to best advantage on the Web and using them to drive readers to the Web; publication evaluation mechanisms (including a report from the Alumni Office and Malatest on their alumni survey); presentations and Q+A sessions with UVic Graphics, UVic Photo Services, the new manager of Printing & Duplicating (when hired); what works and what doesn't work in direct mail [Robie to organize]
• Critique sessions of our own publications
• Adding to the website a list of online free-or-cheap sites with publication-quality photos [Robie to organize]
• Exploring access to a secure storage site on campus for our cartons of publications [Robie to follow-up]
• Exploring the possibility of a corporate alliance with a market research firm to do some pro-bono evaluation research/consulting for us [Robie to follow up]

Ideas raised before the meeting by members unable to attend:

• A section of the imagebank to contain a set of pre-approved images for publicity needs (each image would be limited to 25 uses before being replaced by a substitute to avoid overuse)
• A workshop on goal-setting for specific publications with an eye to further multiple use of the content