annual report – Publisher's Corner

MagCloud offers a lot of options to help you communicate with members of your organization. Not only can you offer members the choice of a print or digital version through the MagCloud website, but you can also use our Ship to Group feature to mail a print copy to each one of them or use our Guest Pass feature to allow members-only access to unlisted publications via email.

Whether your group is focused on a shared interest or a shared alma mater, keeping members informed is an important part of maintaining any membership organization. At MagCloud we’ve seen membership communications take many forms, including newsletters, annual reports, member directories, and even calendars.

While the content of member communications varies greatly depending on the type of organization and the form of publication being created, here are a couple of design tips that are always good to keep in mind:

1. Keep your message clear. This doesn’t just pertain to what you are writing, but also to how you present your message on the page. Make sure that the information that is most important to your members is placed front and center, and anything additional is cleanly laid out in an organized and easy to follow fashion. Doing so will allow members to easily navigate through the publication and better ensure that they receive the messages you are hoping to deliver. This is particularly important when creating a member directory, which by nature contains a large amount of content. You don’t want to hinder the delivery of this content by having a disorderly layout that is difficult to find your way through.

The Moorestown Rowing Club’s annual publication offers a great example of a large amount of content that has been laid out in an orderly fashion. Using bold titles and a consistent two-spread layout they are able to present their team rosters in a way that is easy to navigate and understand.

2. Use colors, fonts and imagery that are familiar. Although you may not think of it this way, your organization is a brand, and it’s important to take advantage of brand recognition in the communications you send to your members. The easiest way to do this is through the colors, fonts and imagery you use, matching those in your publication with ones that are used elsewhere on your group’s website or blog. By maintaining a consistent look and feel, you’ll help ensure that members make the association with your organization instantly when the printed piece lands on their doorstep.

The American Glass Guild does a great job of establishing a brand with their MagCloud-published newsletter. They not only keep a consistent look and feel with each issue but also using colors, fonts and imagery in their publications that is similar to those found on their website.

3. Balance your content. As with the other publication types we’ve discussed in recent weeks, it’s good to keep your readers engaged in your content, regardless of what the intent of the publication is. A big part of this is visual – when a reader encounters a page full of text, they may feel somewhat daunted by the amount of content they are being presented with. Rather than just giving your readers a lot of text to consume, balance the layout of your member communications with supporting images and related infographics. Even just breaking up a page of text with some white space can help make your message easier on the eyes. The easier your message is to consume, the more likely it is that your members will receive it.

The Canadian Council on Social Development’s Perception magazine is a great example of a membership publication with a balanced layout. Each of the longer text pieces in the magazine are accompanied by images, call-out quotes, and colored text boxes of related information. Not only does this makes the pages of the publication more visually appealing than they if they were just filled with solid blocks of text, but the added content also makes them more interesting to read.

Has your club or organization used MagCloud to communicate with its members? Tell us how in the comments below.

While portfolios and business brochures are relatively common publication types on MagCloud these days, there are a number of other unique use cases we see where publishers take advantage of MagCloud’s high quality print and digital distribution to serve their business needs. Today we’d like to share a few of these with you, and hopefully spark your creativity for your own MagCloud publication.

Calendars
As discussed in our post earlier this week, we usually see an uptick in the number of calendars published on the site around this time of year. These calendars show off everything from family portraits to product imagery, and with the MagCloud storefront and print on demand capability we’ve seen some successful calendar fundraising efforts. Plus, now that we have our smaller digest format, MagCloud calendars can be ultra-portable or even expanded into daily planners. If you’ve been looking for a place to get started on your own calendar, check out our 2012 calendar templates.

Annual Reports
Another timely publication type we see on the MagCloud site is the annual report. These run the gamut from smaller startups who just want to print up a handful of copies for investors to larger companies that want an easy way to make their report available online with both print and digital options. Our standard-sized perfect bound publication is particularly well-suited to this use case, since its heavier cover stock and square binding offers a more professional look and feel.

Holiday Greetings
MagCloud also offers a great way to get in the holiday spirit with a pro-quality print and digital family newsletter that gets published and distributed just in time for the holidays. Combine your Holiday Newsletter publication with our Ship to Group feature making it easy to send one copy of your publication to a group of addresses. If you’re looking for tips to make your own holiday greetings through MagCloud, check our blog post from last year for templates and instructions.

Cookbooks
Recipe collections are another popular MagCloud publication type, serving the purpose of business promotions, community fundraisers, and wedding favors. With options for ordering print copies and downloading onto mobile devices like the iPad, MagCloud cookbooks are easy to keep close at hand in the kitchen. To help you get started on your own cookbook, check out our prior blog posts with templates and instructions for Adobe InDesign, iWork Pages, and Microsoft Word.

Workbooks, Manuals, and Guides
A number of publishers have used MagCloud to print field guides, camp workbooks, how-to guides, training manuals, educational workbooks, and operations manuals to complement a variety of business 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.

Programs
We see programs of all kinds published on the MagCloud site for events like weddings, plays, memorial services, conferences and music festivals. Our new digest product is particularly well-suited for this use case, since its smaller size is less obtrusive and fits more easily into bags and purses.

Menus
Another great business use case for MagCloud is a menu. Our full color printing helps show off vibrant food photography, while the on-demand printing makes it easy to order copies in small batches as they are needed and make changes between print runs.

Knitting Patterns
There are a number of publishers on MagCloud creating knitting pattern publications. We’ve seen patterns for hats, mittens, scarves, leg warmers, sweaters, and even a wine bottle cozy. Get a first hand account from MagCloud publisher Alexandra Tinsley.

Real Estate Materials
We’ve also had real estate brokers printing 4-page factsheets for their listed homes through MagCloud, as well as more extensive photo pamphlets for both homes and yachts. We also included a more extensive listing catalog as one of our templates for Microsoft Publisher.

Blog-Based Publications
A number of publishers on MagCloud are bloggers who use MagCloud to publish their content in an alternate way. Sometimes these are published as collections of posts that might fit a theme, or were voted on by the community, or are simply from a period of time. In other instances, these publications contain additional information that expands upon what was originally posted on the blog, such as fresh content about a profiled individual or the backstory of an image.

These are just a sampling of the diverse publication types that we’ve seen published to the site, with more being uploaded everyday. What have you created through MagCloud? Have you been inspired to create any of the publications types listed above? Tell us in the comments below!