I was sitting with an editor the other week and we were talking about design and format. She wanted some feedback on her latest ideas for making her bulletin articles and headings pop.
After looking through her bulletin, knowing what it used to look like, I told her how well I liked the overall design. Smiling back at her, I saw she was no longer smiling back at me. She reached under a stack of paperwork and pulled out several bulletins from other parishes.
“I copied from these!” she said, a tortured overtone to her voice. “That’s plagiarism, isn’t it?”
That poor editor! She had done what so many other editors, designers, and countless other people had done in the past. I looked through her stack of bulletins and found she had gained INSPIRATION from them. She saw what others had done so well and tailored it to her own needs.
Publisher, Quark and InDesign has a limited set of shading variations, or gradients, that can be used for headings with any effect.- The editor gained the idea to use this shading, provided by Publisher (in her case), from other bulletins that also use Publisher to produce their bulletin.
- My editor is not the only person to have used this type of heading. She never thought to use it until she saw other bulletins, which most likely got their inspiration the same way.
We then got on the internet and did about 2 minutes of research. A Google search (you can use Yahoo or even Bing) using the term “design inspiration” yielded blogs, college sites and websites devoted to gaining a bit of help with design ideas and even some ethical discussions that helped ease her fears further.
If you would like some inspiration from other bulletins and newsletters, page through other parishes and organizations that print with us on Seek & Find. Bright Ideas magazine has creative ways to use their artwork every quarter too. Who knows, maybe someone will look through your publication and get some inspiration!
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