Offering an easy way to bring lesson plans to life and engage students, MagCloud is being used as an educational tool both in and out of the classroom.

Curriculum Resource Planning and Teacher’s Aids

A number of educators and researchers are using MagCloud to share curriculum ideas and best practices. Whether using our Standard product to create a best practices magazine or simply a short curriculum synopsis with our Pamphlet product, MagCloud makes it easy for teachers to collaborate on current curriculum initiatives.

Example Publications:

• Curriculum Handbook
• Children’s Art
• Science and Literacy
• English Language Arts
• Student Publishing Examples
• Current Events Discussion Guide

Class Projects

Self-publishing provides students with a creative way to showcase their understanding of a topic, their personal perspectives and their own artistic work.  Publications like Bulldog Press and FIT have allowed high school and college students to express themselves and demonstrate their evolving skills.

Example Publications:

• Food Atlas and Cookbook
• Student Team Anthology
• Current Affairs
• Catalog
• Teen Issues
• Photography Project
• Student Magazine and Photo Project
• Visual Narrative

Workbooks, Study Guides, Training Materials and More

Teachers, instructors and trainers have used MagCloud to print field guides, camp workbooks, how-to guides, study-guides, training manuals, and educational workbooks to complement a variety of educational needs. In some cases these are printed ahead of time for use during a workshop or class, while other times they are simply made available online for attendees to purchase as supplementary or stand-alone training materials or as samples for other teachers.

Example Publications:

• Math Workbook
• Macroeconomics Study Guide
• Literature Journal
• Research Journal
• Training Guide
• Photography Workshop
• Field Guide
• Guitar Workbook
• Photography How-to-Guide

The Lorax Storytelling Tool

MagCloud has also developed a Storybook tool for creating custom books using templates, characters and backgrounds from the movie The Lorax. Used in conjunction with Scholastic’s custom Lorax curriculum, students can write a story that describes one creative new idea for how they, their family, or their community could live more sustainably.

Share in the comments section how you’ve used MagCloud for your teaching needs or read about some additional ideas from Jim Vanides, a member of the HP Office of Global Social Innovation.

No matter how professional a staff you may have hired or how special the foods you prepare may be, your catering business will always need appealing promotional pieces to attract new customers. In most cases your menu or brochure is a customer’s first opportunity to meet you. MagCloud makes it easy to publish a variety of publications for your catering business, and with low-minimum print runs (in most cases as few as 1), digital distribution options and direct mailing features, it doesn’t matter if you’ve catered 2 events or 200, you’ll wow your clients with beautiful publications that leave their mouths watering.

So why not try some of these delicious ideas to promote your business:

Flyers to Promote Your Brand

Our double-sided, single sheet Flyer product is ideal for brief messages or content that changes often such as sales promotions, or seasonal offerings. It’s available in four size options: 8 x 8”, 5.5 x 8.5”, 8.5 x 5.5″ or 8.5 x 11” so you can be sure to pick something that really makes your brand shine.

Glossy Brochures to Highlight Your Services, Team & Experience

A brochure will help you showcase your catering business and help the customer get a detailed account of your company. Our 4-page Pamphlet product is the perfect way to quickly capture your audience’s attention and whether you use a standard 8.5 x 11″, a unique square 8 x 8″ size or a pocket-sized 5.5 x 8.5″ you can rest assured that it will be affordable and beautifully-printed. With an easy one-click option to opt-in for digital distribution, you can also offer your brochure as a free digital-download for potential clients to peruse on their PC or mobile device and in the Free MagCloud iPad App.

Print and Digital Price Sheets

Once a client is interested in booking you, you’ll want to make it as easy for them as possible. Price sheets that double as order forms make for a tidy way to create a menu together. With MagCloud’s combo of high-quality print-on-demand and easy-to-use digital distribution options, you can make your price sheets available as print copies that you keep on hand as well as digital versions so potential clients can view them on any PC or mobile device.

Sample Menus

MagCloud’s new flyer sizes are perfect for reprinting menus from past events to give your customers an idea of how a beautifully planned menu comes together. You could even go so far as to create a proposed menu for their event and present it to them at their tasting.

Wine Lists

With distributor prices and product availability constantly changing, MagCloud makes it easy to have an up-to-date wine list and still look professional. Whenever you need to change a price or add a new wine to your list, simply upload a new PDF and order as few or as many copies as you need.

Special & Seasonal Menus

If you offer a variety of cuisines, or even if you want to break up your menus by season or meal-type, you can easily create a standard menu template that you can change up to create more specialized menus.

Full-Service Catalogs

Many catering businesses are full service, and can provide chairs, tables, china, glassware, silverware, tents and umbrellas, and even arrange centerpieces, place cards, and party favors. If your business offers a wide range of services like this, be sure to present them to your client in your brochure, and offer more in-depth information through a specialized catalog.

Partner Publications

Partnering with venue coordinators, event planners and other service professionals like wedding photographers is a great way to get your brand out there to more clients. Try collaborating with the other pros working with you on events and see if you can work out a way to help promote one another with unique pieces that highlight both of your services. For example a collaboration with a photographer could result in mouth-watering photos of your food and presentation that you can use to promote your business, and referrals for future events.

A One-Stop Shop for Your Business

With publisher pages that can be personalized, and the ability to group similar publications into tidy categories, MagCloud is a great platform to keep all of your business materials in one place and make them easily accessible in both print and digital formats. It’s easy to direct your customers to your personalized and branded page where they can find your menus, catalogs and wine lists all in one place, making them handy to select and download, or access in MagCloud’s free Ipad App.

Have you used MagCloud to promote your catering or event business? Have another great idea that we missed? Share it below in the comments section!

Now back to the winners, drum roll please….this month’s three randomly selected winners [and their go-to cameras] are:

• @Ph1sch: @MagCloud, my go-to camera is the Canon 7D right now. The frame rate is incredible, and the results are stunning! #MagCloudQ

• Scott Foster: It really depends on the situation – for something quick on the fly, I use my point and shoot. For more planned out stuff I use my Canon DSLR. And for late night, in the dark I use my modified point and shoot for IR shooting or some times I will pull out the full spectrum camera for some funky shots

• Heather Scheer Moore: My Canon Rebel XSi is my baby! I absolutely LOVE it! I am never without it! <3

Congratulations to each of you! We will be in contact this week to arrange delivery of your $25 MagCloud gift card.

Didn’t win this time? Try your luck next time with May’s giveaway! We’ll announce details soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks again to all who participated!

The new app is available immediately in the iTunes app store.

Features Include:

• Browse, download  and read thousands of free, full-color digital publications. New publications added daily.
• Sign in with your MagCloud username to download and read publications previously purchased from the MagCloud website.
• Easy-to-use reader interface in portrait or landscape mode, with support for swiping, pinching, zooming and the iPad’s new Retina display.
• Visually navigate through publications with the convenient page preview slider and “All Pages” overview
• Search for publications by title, collection, publisher or through keywords in the publication description and tags.
• Hyperlink support provides a richer reader experience.
• Download publications for reading offline.

Hyperlink Support:

The new MagCloud iPad app also enables publishers to include hyperlinks in their publications providing an enhanced user experience and new advertiser options. The app supports the use of hyperlinks for both images and text. This means you can link from your catalog of products back to an ecommerce site, or allow customers to draft emails to an address listed in your brochure just by clicking on it. You can also use hyperlinks to add value to your advertising space by allowing readers to click through to your advertisers’ websites.

MagCloud’s digital publishing makes it easy for businesses to reach customers wherever they prefer their content.

Let us know which new MagCloud iPad app features are your favorite and what you would like to see in future versions in the comments section below.

The new sizes provide more creative flexibility for things like menus, promotional handouts, resumes and more.

Flyer publications consist of a single sheet with front and back color printing.  We’ve also added the option for UV coating on all Flyer products. Ultra Violet (UV) coating adds a protective layer to the printed page giving it an eye-catching sheen and also making it more resilient to normal wear and tear.

Flyer products range from $.32 a sheet for 5.5 x 8.5”, 8.5 x 5.5 size publications to $.40 a sheet for 8 x 8″ and 8.5 x 11″ publications.  Flyers have a minimum print order of 8 copies in multiples of 4 (i.e. 8, 12 or 16 copies), which will be bundled into one shipment.  UV coating adds an additional $.06 to each sheet.  So an 8 pack of 8 x 8 Flyers with UV coating is just $4.16.

Learn more about Flyer on the MagCloud website.

Ideal for portfolios, look books, small catalogs, handbooks and more, Square publications can be anywhere from 4 to 384 pages. The new Square product will be available for the same $.20 per page ($.15 per page for orders of 20 copies or more).

MagCloud Square Design Specifications:

• PDF Size with Bleed:         8.25 x 8.25″
• Trim Size (Final Size):       8 x 8″
• Bleed Settings:                   0” inside edge, 0.25″ outside edge; 0.125″ top and bottom
• Half-Fold Binding:             4 Pages
• Saddle-Stitch Binding:      8 – 100 Pages
• Perfect Binding:                  20 – 384 Pages

Start publishing with Square today and let us know how you envision using this new product in the comments below.

Happy Publishing!

Invitations

For those who want to design their own wedding invitations and give them a personal touch, we recently upgraded our Flyer and Pamphlet products to 80# Cover Stock, so your invitations will have a heavier weight, giving them a premium look and feel. Here’s a great example of a wedding booklet, which includes information for guests about directions, places to stay, things to do etc. MagCloud also offers a wide variety of templates so you can pick and choose which is right for you and your event.

‘The Story of Us’ Booklet

Everyone enjoys a good love story. Share the bride and groom’s story in a beautiful MagCloud booklet, and distribute it as part of the wedding gift. Here’s a creative example featured on our Pinterest board for inspiration.

Wedding Planning Survival Guide

Member of the wedding party? Help out the happy couple by creating a wedding survival guide. Organize the run-of-show, tips, funny bride/groom stories and/or any last minute advice into a beautifully-designed and personalized booklet for the bride and groom to be.

Magazine Guest Scrapbooks

Create a unique one-of-a-kind scrapbook about the best day of your lives using Flickr! All you need to do is gather your photos into an online photo album (take a peek at this post for tips!), then choose the photo set. From there, your photos will automatically be organized into a beautiful magazine format. You can even use Poyomi to create a personal wedding collage book.

Now that you’ve heard ours, we’d love to hear your wedding planning ideas, and/or how you’ve used MagCloud for wedding planning-please share in the comments below!

I created my brochure so that anyone could see a sample of my work, pricing and little snippets about myself and the weddings I have photographed. With my brochure I have made an impact on brides and grooms with my neatly presented work, pictures and lay out. My latest brochure was updated to include all pictures from this past wedding season (2011) as well as full-page spreads of previous weddings I have photographed.

MagCloud has provided me with the most cost-effective way to  distribute and manage my brochures; as well as providing the print quality that as a wedding photographer I expect and need to present my work in a manner that I feel is professional. Thanks so much MagCloud, keep up the good work!

Mike Lesnick, Owner/Photographer, Mike Lesnick Photography

Visit Mike’s website to learn more about his work or preview his work on MagCloud.

Portfolios

We’ve discussed before how MagCloud is a great resource for publishing portfolios since it allows both an affordable print version and convenient digital version with a single PDF upload. As a professional event planner, showing potential clients your previous work will not only help you land the job but may also act as a source of inspiration. Since MagCloud offers prints for as little as $0.16 per page with no minimum order quantity, you can print off as few or as many full color, professional-quality portfolios as you need to share with these potential clients, at a price that won’t break the bank if you need to replace a copy. You can also make the same portfolio available in the MagCloud storefront for viewing as a PDF or in the MagCloud iPad app as a way to share your work digitally, with built-in promotion tools for your social media channels and website.

Vendor Lookbooks

Just as a portfolio can help inspire your clients for their event, having vendor lookbooks to show previous work specific to a particular photographer, venue, hair or makeup artist can also help simplify these decisions for your clients. With MagCloud you can have print copies for clients to browse through as you meet with them, and also present the same publication in a digital format for browsing in the MagCloud iPad application or as a PDF on other digital devices. You can also make these publications available through the MagCloud website, to link to from your website and promote through your social media channels as a means of marketing your business. Since these books promote not only your services but those of the venues and photographers being highlighted, this also offers an opportunity for cross-promotion, as noted in our post for wedding photographers. While you use these lookbooks to promote the work you’ve done with a particular vendor, you could also offer these pieces to the vendor as a means of promoting both their work and yours to potential clients. Using the MagCloud storefront, these vendors can order copies for themselves as they need them without having to go through you to get them.

Save-the-Dates

Pinterest is brimming with creative ideas for non-traditional save-the-dates that offer more information about the bride and groom, and better fit their personalities. MagCloud’s Digest Landscape product is a great format for creating compact save-the-date photobooks, with photos of the couple, the story of how they met and got engaged, and when and where the wedding will be held. If the couple has done an engagement photo shoot, this is a great way to show off the resulting photos in a high quality printed piece that guests will enjoy flipping through and reading. With MagCloud’s Ship to Group feature, you can even drop-ship copies of a publication to a list of addresses, so both the printing and distribution of the save-the-dates can be taken care of at once.

Guest Information Booklets

It’s likely that many of the guests at the wedding you are planning will be from out-of-town, and in most cases, they will be in town for a day or two leading up to or following the wedding. Therefore, it’s a nice idea to provide them with some information about the area, including options for lodging, places to eat, and things to do. This is particularly helpful for destination weddings, where everyone will likely be from outside the area and you may opt to arrange for additional activities for these guests to do. MagCloud is a great option for printing up reference booklets of guest information like this, to either send to guests ahead of time using the Ship to Group feature, or to make available via a link from the wedding website so guests can download a digital version for viewing on their iPad or other digital device. If this information is known in advance, this booklet could even act as the save-the-date and offer guests plenty of advance notice for planning their trip and booking lodging.

Programs

Whether it’s to provide information about the bridal party, list readings or songs to be performed, or simply to remind guests about directions to the reception location, most wedding ceremonies include a paper program that gets passed out to guests at the door. These programs provide helpful information for guests, and also offer a keepsake of the event. MagCloud’s smaller Digest product is a perfect format for programs of all lengths, particularly at the 4-page Pamphlet size. Our 4-page products are now printed on a heavier paper stock, so they offer a more formal feel that makes them a great fit for wedding programs. With no minimum order quantity, you can order programs in a quantity that fits the size of your event, whether it’s an intimate gathering with just a few guests or a larger affair numbering in the hundreds.

If you’re looking to create a wedding program for yourself, check out this basic template for Microsoft Publisher to help you get started.

Have you used MagCloud to publish content for a wedding or other event? Tell us how in the comments below.