Whether it's stewarding at a festival, writing for a magazine, or producing works of art, volunteering for creative projects is bound to get those juices flowing.

All | Catherine | Rhiannon | Mei

« Previous day (Jul 18, 2008) | Main | Next day (Jul 20, 2008) »

Friday Jul 18, 2008

Volunteering from home

 

I haven’t been able to go into the office for a few weeks so I’ve been volunteering at home. I’ve been busy working on the layout of the newsletter and making any necessary changes to the articles.

Last time I met with Felicitie she showed me an old edition of the newsletter which had been made into an A5 booklet. Our newsletter is usually printed back-to-back on A4 and then stapled together. Sometimes it’s also sent out via email to cut down on printing costs. We were really impressed with the way that the newsletter looks in booklet form, so we’ve decided to produce the summer edition as an A5 booklet.

Since I started volunteering as an editor last October, I’ve also been in charge of the layout of the newsletter. At first this was rather daunting as I’d never designed any before! Initially, I spent a lot of time creating a template which we have used for two editions so far. I decided it was best to have a simple design and not use too many distracting colours. Most of the newsletter is composed of two columns, with a narrower one to the left of the page and a larger one to the right. This format works quite well as it enables us to put our own columns, and any volunteer opportunities on the left of the page, and then focus on the main articles in the larger column. Hopefully our readers agree!

Now that the newsletter is to be in booklet form, it means changing the layout slightly. The only stipulation about the design is that the font must be size 12 for ease of reading. According to Yk, the technical wizard at SCVS, the A4 newsletter will need to be reduced into a booklet, and this means that the font must originally be size 17. As you can see, I have no idea how to make the newsletter into a booklet! Due to the larger sized font and compact design, the space available for articles has reduced. This has meant press releases have had to be edited to fit the pages and ideas have had to be expressed in fewer words. At the moment, there are some spaces throughout in the newsletter that don’t have enough room for substantial articles. We’ll have to find some interesting things to fill the spaces.

Aside from working on the layout, I’ve been emailing Felicitie regularly about my progress.  We’re hoping that our illustrator Lindsey will be able to draw something to go with my article on elephants. When I first began volunteering, we didn’t have many photos or pictures to put in the newsletter, so we’re very lucky to have an illustrator to liven things up!

Also, in my last post I mentioned the article I was writing about Global Xchange. Well, it’s finally complete and Felicitie has sent it to the editor of the Millennium Volunteer newsletter in Wales! Hopefully it will be included and other MVs in Wales will be able to find about what’s happening in Swansea.

Posted by Catherine ( 2:51 PM )
Link to this post Comments[0]