The Springfield, Ill., alt-weekly last week debuted a new-look paper with larger pages and stich-and-trim binding. Times publisher Sharon Whalen says Topaz Design consulted on the project, but the Times design staff had a major hand in the redesign as well.
This year the Austin Chronicle gift guide features an item close to our hearts: Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005. Reviewer Nora Ankrum writes, "This is the gift for the writer or journalist on your shopping list, to be kept on the reference shelf next to the OED and the Chicago Manual and the most recent Best American Magazine Writing, but you won't find it at a bookstore, so order it online, soon." And no, the Austin Chronicle does not have a winning entry included in the book, although it has received AltWeekly Award recognition in earlier years.
The winners of the 2005 AltWeekly Awards unveil the process they went through to create their first-place articles, photography, cartoons and design. The series sheds light on the work found in the book "Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005."
This year AAN put out no ordinary awards book. Among the honored first-place entries is a Pulitzer Prize-winning story by Willamette Week's Nigel Jaquiss. "Best AltWeekly Writing and Design 2005" offers a wide selection of riveting reading, produced by some seasoned writers and others just beginning to make their mark. The bookstore-quality volume is designed to reach a wider audience than ever.
Twenty-five of the 43 AAN publishers who responded to a survey on Friday afternoon said they were interested in running house ads promoting the Gambit Relief Fund. So AAN asked Katherine Topaz of Topaz Design to create a quarter-page vertical ad (the size preferred by 78 percent of the respondents) that could be easily adapted by AAN members for use in their own papers. Kat ended up designing three of them, and they are now available for download from this page in the AAN Resource Library. An even larger majority of respondents said they were interested in running ads directing reader contributions to general Katrina-relief organizations sanctioned by AAN, so another set of quarter-page ads will be created once the association identifies general relief funds that make sense for its members.
