embarrassing but boring newsletter question

[JJ]

I'm in charge of our small school's PA newsletter next year. The last two years' newsletters (we're finishing up our second year as a school) were very clip-arty and had very large type. I want to do something a bit more.. um.. sedated? professional?

Does anyone have any suggestions? I've put together all the things that need to go into the newsletter and was going to make a template to use each month. It'll be in black and white; we can't afford colour.

I'm obv not sure what I'm doing. My grand plan is to use this experience to get some volunteer work somewhere and go from there. If nothing else, it'll be fun.

Do you mean design tips JJ? If so:

My advice would be: Keep it simple
By that I mean: no more than two fonts (preferably just one), no more than two different font sizes. Don't use underlining, and don't overuse bold. Keep the design very clean and simple, make sure you have good sized margins, and plenty of white space. This makes for much easier readability, and makes it look more professional and more appealing. A two column format works quite well for a school newsletter, to distinguish it from a letter from the Head.

My favourite font of the moment is Trebuchet ... it's a nice compromise font for me, a kind of 'modern classic'.

HTH

PS If this is not the sort of advice you were looking for, please post again!

why embarassing?

Roisin is spot on, though I would add that you should remember to justify your paragraphs - makes a big difference.

Maybe spend some time on getting a nice Header graphic too (the word "Newsletter" in the style of the school's logo? or just in a nice font. There is room for more than 1 font! )

I was chair of our pta for 3 years and I would be inclined to keep it fairly simple but not too boring and definitely not too long - I typed something once just using normal Times New Roman and it looked crap. Do you have a noticeboard as photos of projects/purchases always look nice and you can "signpost" parents to look at what a good job the PA have done in the last year. I'd just keep it short and sweet. Clipart sadly does go down well. I'm sure if you google you will find something similar on the net.

I used to do a parish magazine. I found that the use of borders and decorative lines went down well, and made things stand out. I only ever used two type faces but did titles Larger. Alaways had a middle page spread, (easy for the printers) and I am afraid that clipart is really useful for filling in those annoying gaps, you can cut into it so the print goes, in/over them which makes it much more interesting.
Goodluck

Hi JJ. I was gonna pretty much say what has already been said. Second what SP has said about justifying your paragraphs it makes a huge difference. If your PC has publisher you culd use this. It's a great programme for newsletters.

Good Luck!

I do the newsletter for my local NCT branch ATM. Will think of tips!

Book Antiqua is a nice font. Too spaced out for ours as it makes the newsletter to thick (higher print/postage costs) so I use boring old times new roman ATM.
Consistant style throughout - same font for all titles.
White space! Don't make it too packed with text. I use "pull out" boxes to split large taxt blocks up. I put a short, pertinant quote from the article into a box in a different text style (in my case, Comic San Serif, italic, 1 font size up form the main text.

Comic sans is a really popular font for newsletters, especially in an education context - I think it looks like a happy smiley font! So I echo what is said below.

I also think it is ok to put a couple of different fonts in, eg a different font for the title, as long as it fits in stylewise - eg comic sans and ariel.

Another font to consider (in small doses) is tempus sans - another 'smiley' one!

Thanks for the tips and please please please if you think of anything else, let me know.

jampot, we do have a board -- it would be good if people actually looked at it! So I'll add that in my list of what the newsletter should contain.

The articles will be short and sweet. The formatting suggestions are great -- thank you thank you. It will look better if it's uncluttered, but I had no clue how to do that. I like the idea of pull-out boxes,too. I'm going to print this out when I start and go from there.

Do you guys plan what will go in it ?

I've got a list and think it might help to decide what goes where before I start. For example, on the front page, I'll have the president's message (short); a report from the prev month's social activities with a photo; a list the dates for the PA and SC stuff for the month; and one short blurb.

Or that's part of my extrememly tentative plan.

It's embarrassing because I feel a bit in over my head. It's one thing to criticise someone else's newsletter, another thing entirely to do my own.

soupy is the queen of her local nct letter

Forgot to ask, are any of yours online? Could I see them?

Mines not online I'm afraid. I'm guessing you don't have MS Publisher...? I can probably scan a few pages and email them to you if you like - huffahorse at hotmail dot com.

The NCT newsletter I do is around 72 pages in an A5 booklet. Front cover has the newsletter's name, an appropriate picture (clip art. photo...) and the date/issue number. Inside front cover is the committee list, first page contents & disclaimer, next page Editor's letter, next chair's letter then into articles etc. The center pages are always the events calendar and a full page ad for the next major event.

Each type of item has it's own header picture (baby for "birth story", chair for the chairs letter... you get the idea.) which goes in the top corner under the title.

Each page has our branch name and the issue date at the top and a line across the bottom with page number underneath.

This all makes SO much more sense when you look at it!!

SoupDragon, thanks! Will email you. I don't have Publisher; I'll use Freehand.

Thanks again. I've had all summer to do it and it's supposed to go out tomorrow... yep, I'm frantically working on it.

But it looks very nice, I think. I really couldn't have done it without all the advice. Thanks!

Have you still not done it??!