standard – Publisher's Corner

Celebrating Dads and Grads

11 Jun 201319 Oct 2017Meghan Cordella5 Comments

With Father’s Day this Sunday and the school year coming to a close, today we’re going to highlight some ways to use MagCloud to do some last minute shopping for Dad, and also how recent graduates can use MagCloud as they commemorate the past and look toward their future.

MagCloud Gifts for Dad

18 Month Photo Calendar

The mid-year timing of Father’s Day is a perfect opportunity to create a custom photo calendar that your dad can enjoy through the end of 2014. We’ve modified our 2013 calendar templates to go from July 2013 to December 2014 in our Standard (8.25″ x 10.75″) and Small Square (8″ x 8″) formats for InDesign CS4 and newer, and Apple Pages. Just download the template for the size of calendar you want to create in your software of choice, add your photos and use the included instructions to export a PDF for uploading to the MagCloud website. With MagCloud you can order just a single print copy for your dad, or order additional copies for other family members.

InDesign CS4 and newer: Standard template | Small Square template

Apple Pages: Standard template | Small Square template

If creating your own calendar file in InDesign or Pages isn’t for you, check out our partner Poyomi. Poyomi lets you create a calendar just by uploading your photos from your computer, SmugMug, Picasa, or Facebook, and then you can have it uploaded automatically to your MagCloud account.

Custom BBQ Recipe Book

If your dad loves to grill, pull together his go-to recipes into a custom recipe book. Click here to check out our recent post on National Barbecue Month for templates and tips.

Print and Digital MagCloud Publications

No matter what your dad is into, from cars or technology, to sports, cooking, or travel, chances are good you can find a MagCloud publication about it. Print copies always make a great gift for reading on the beach this summer, or if he has an iPad, get Dad an iTunes gift card that he can use to purchase digital versions of the publications he likes.

MagCloud Uses for Grads

Photobooks for Friends

Before you and your friends head off in various directions after graduation, commemorate the fun times you had together in a photobook. MagCloud’s 8.25″ x 5.25″ Digest product is a great size for displaying full color photographs in a nice compact format, and only costs $0.16 per page to print. Check out our blog posts about creating photobooks with Adobe Photoshop or Apple Aperture, or see our Getting Started page for instructions in a variety of other programs. You can also use our partner Poyomi to quickly turn your photos from Facebook or Instagram into a photobook without having to lay them out yourself.

Custom Thank You Notes

Now that you’ve received all those generous graduation gifts, show your appreciation with customized thank you notes. MagCloud’s single sheet Flyers in our smaller Digest size are printed on a heavier cover stock that make them ideal for using as flat notecards, and the size fits perfectly into A9 envelopes. All you have to do is use the program of your choice to create a PDF that is either 8.5″ x 5.5″ for portrait notecards or 5.5″ x 8.5″ for landscape notecards, and upload that PDF to MagCloud. Then you can order as few or as many thank you cards as you need, for just $0.32 each (or $0.24 each if you order 20 or more). For instructions to create your PDF, check out the Software-Specific Instruction Packages on our Getting Started page.

Print and Digital Portfolio

For those of you heading into the work world as artists, photographers, designers, architects, or writers, MagCloud is a great option for publishing your portfolio. MagCloud’s print-on-demand features allow you to order commercial-quality printed portfolios at an affordable price, across a range of sizes and binding options, in as few or as many copies as you need. You can even have copies of your portfolio shipped directly to an address list of potential employers using our Ship to Group feature. In addition to having high quality print versions of your portfolio available on demand, you can also make your portfolio available digitally for viewing in the MagCloud Web Viewer, and as a downloadable PDF, using the same PDF you upload for printing.

MagCloud wishes a hearty congratulations to all the graduates out there, and a happy Father’s Day to all the dads!

Using Photoshop to Create a Vacation Photobook

1 Aug 201228 Oct 2013Meghan Cordella11 Comments

Following up on last week’s blog post about using the new Book Module in Adobe Lightroom 4 to create Square MagCloud publications, today we are looking at an easy way you can use Adobe Photoshop to create a vacation photobook with MagCloud’s landscape-oriented Standard and Digest products. We’ve also added new Software-Specific Instruction Packets for Photoshop to our Getting Started page for all of our product sizes. These downloadable folders contain MagCloud-specific templates and instructions for Photoshop CS4 and newer, as well as step-by-step instructions to help you create your publication from scratch using any version of Photoshop.

1. Pick Your Photos

To get started with your photobook, the first thing you need are photos. For the photobook we’ll be creating today, all the images will be full-bleed and extend to the edge of the landscape-oriented pages. As a result, landscape-oriented images will work best for this type of book. If you wanted to use both portrait and landscape-oriented photos, then one of our Square products might be a better fit. You can find instructions for using Photoshop to create an 8″ x 8″ or 12″ x 12″ Square publication on the Getting Started page on the MagCloud website.

In addition to the orientation of your photos, the resolution is also important. We recommend using images that are 300 pixels per inch. Therefore, if you want to create a small Digest size photobook, you should use images that are at least 2550 pixels wide by 1650 pixels tall, or roughly the largest image size available from a 4 megapixel digital camera. If you want to create a larger Standard size photobook, your images will need to be higher resolution – at least 3300 pixels wide by 2550 pixels tall, or roughly the largest image size available from an 8 megapixel digital camera. If you are using high quality images from at least an 8 megapixel digital camera then your images should be fine for either size, however you can check the manual for your camera to be sure, or check the dimensions of your images in the file information on your computer.

2. Create Pages in Photoshop

To create each page in your photobook, including the front and back covers, open the image you want to use in Photoshop and go to Image > Image Size. Make sure that the boxes are checked next to “Constrain Proportions” and “Resample Image”, select “Bicubic Sharper” from the dropdown menu, and set the Resolution to 300 pixels/inch. If you are creating a Digest size publication, set the width to 8.5 inches. If this causes the height to drop to less than 5.5 inches, then set the height to be 5.5 inches. Note that this will cause the width to be greater than 8.5 inches, but the image will be cropped to compensate for this in the next step. Similarly, if you are creating a Standard size publication, set the width to 11 inches. If doing so causes the height to drop to less than 8.5 inches, then set the height to 8.5 inches and allow the width to go above 11 inches. When you are finished, click OK.

Next, go to Image > Canvas Size. Select “inches” from the dropdown menu, if it’s not selected already. If you are creating a Digest size publication, set the Width to 8.5 inches and the Height to 5.5 inches. If you are creating a Standard size publication, set the Width to 11 inches and the Height to 8.5 inches. Click OK, and when you are warned that some clipping will occur, click the button to Proceed.

If you would like to add any text over your full-page image, like a title on the cover page, you can do so now using the text tool. Keep in mind that Digest publications will have 0.125″ trimmed off the top and bottom edges, and 0.25″ trimmed off the outside edge (the right, in the case of the cover), and since the trim can vary slightly in either direction, it’s best to keep any text at least 0.25″ inside of this trim line. Similarly, landscape-oriented Standard publications are trimmed 0.125″ on all sides, and also have holes punched on the inside edge for the Wire-O binding (the left, in the case of the cover). Therefore, if you are creating a Standard size photobook, it’s a good idea to keep text 0.25″ inside the trim line on the top, bottom and outside edge and 0.5″ inside the trim line on the inside edge for this size of publication. If you will be adding a lot of content, it may be helpful to add guides to remind yourself where the trim will occur.

When you are happy with the look of your page, go to File > Save As. Select “JPEG” from the Format dropdown menu and make sure that the box next to “Embed Color Profile” is checked. Your color profile may be something other than the sRGB profile shown in the screenshot at right, but embedding your color profile will help ensure that our Indigo presses are able to reproduce your images with the best color possible no matter what color profile they use. Select a name for your file and choose where you want it to be saved on your computer, then click Save. I recommend saving all your page files to a new folder and naming your files numerically, with the cover as Page001.jpg, the inside front cover Page002.jpg, and so on, as this will make it easier to create your final PDF. In the JPEG Options window that appears next, select “Maximum” from the Quality dropdown menu and select the radio button next to “Baseline (Standard)” under Format Options, then click OK.

Repeat these steps for each of the pages in your photobook, resizing and cropping one image for each page. If you want to include pages in your book that don’t include an image, as I did on the inside front and back covers in my publications, take a look at the templates and instructions in the downloadable Instruction Packets on the our Getting Started page. These instructions and templates start with a blank document in Photoshop, rather than modifying an existing image file.

3. Combine Pages into a MagCloud-Ready PDF

Once you’ve created all of the pages for your photobook, it’s time to combine these pages into a single multipage PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro. Open Acrobat and go to File > Create File > Merge Files into a Single PDF. Click the button to Add Files and select all the page JPEGs you just created. Sort the files alphabetically by name to put the pages in numerical order, or use the Move Up/Move Down buttons to rearrange the order of the files. When you are happy with the order, select the largest file icon on the far right where it says File Size and click Combine Files. When prompted, choose a name for your final PDF and click Save. Your PDF is now ready to upload to MagCloud!

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Pro, an alternative method is to use Adobe’s subscription-based CreatePDF service either online or within Adobe Reader to convert your JPEG files to PDFs and combine them. The other option is to save your pages as PDF files out of Photoshop instead of JPEGs, and then combine these single page PDFs into one multipage PDF using a PDF viewer like Apple’s Preview. You can find instructions to do this in the Instruction Packets on the Getting Started page. The downside to this method is that it will result in a PDF that is much larger than the method using JPEG files, and you may be in danger of going over MagCloud’s 300MB file upload limit.

[UPDATE 1: Adobe Bridge is also another good option for combining your Photoshop files into a single multipage PDF. After you’ve created your pages, open Bridge and select all the page files. Click on the Adobe Bridge “Output” workspace and choose the PDF output option and the relevant page size for the product you are creating. Set the Layout to 1 column and 1 row, and make all margins 0″, then click Save. This will export a PDF that is ready to upload to MagCloud. Thanks to our reader Chane for this tip!]

[UPDATE 2: CreatePDF converts JPEG files to 72 dpi PDF files, which results in PDFs that are roughly 4x the dimensions they should be. Therefore, if you will be using CreatePDF to create your multipage PDF, it would be best to export your page files from Photoshop as PDF files. Note that CreatePDF only allows you to combine 10 files at a time, so you will need to combine your PDFs in groups of 10 and then recombine those. Thanks to our reader Jeffrey for these tips!]

You can see the photobooks I created in Photoshop and Acrobat Pro using these instructions on the MagCloud website: Digest and Standard

Product Spotlight: Tabloid, Large Square, Standard Landscape, and Posters

23 Jul 201219 Aug 2015Meghan Cordella17 Comments

Introducing a batch of additional products on the MagCloud website. Our 11″ x 14″ and 14″ x 11″ Small Tabloid size, 17″ x 11″ Large Tabloid size, 12″ x 12″ Square size and 10.75″ x 8.25″ landscape-oriented Standard size all use our Wire-O Binding type. This binding method consists of a double-loop wire binding and pages that are all printed on our thicker 80# cover stock. Not only does the heavier paper stock offer a more substantial feel to these publications, but the wire binding allows them to lay flat and makes it so the pages of the publication can be rotated 360 degrees around the binding and is more durable.

Our Poster format is available in 12″ x 18″ and 18″ x 12″ sizes, and printed on the same 80# cover stock used for Flyers and Pamphlets. MagCloud Posters can be printed on both sides with the same high quality, full color digital printing used with all MagCloud products, and are made more durable with a UV coating on both sides at no extra cost. The best part is that all of this costs just $2.00 per printed Poster, or $1.50 per piece if you order 20 or more.

For inspiration, here are a few ideas for how these products can be used:

Calendars

The Wire-O Binding on the 12″ x 12″ Square and 11″ x 14″ Tabloid make these products great for calendars. Just rotate your content 90 degrees prior to uploading your PDF so that the binding will be on the top edge of your calendar. If you want to use fewer pages in your publication, the larger page size of the 17″ x 11″ Tabloid allows enough space for all the content for a single month to fit on a single page, making a tall and narrow calendar. A 12 month calendar with one page per month, plus two extra pages for the front and back covers will cost you just $7.04.

Catalogs

The larger format of all of these products offer an even greater opportunity to show off your products and services in a catalog format. Furthermore, both the unique shape of the 12″ x 12″ Square and the oversize dimensions of our 17″ x 11″ Large Tabloid will let your catalog stand out from the competition. In all cases, the thicker paper these products are printed on has a more substantial and expensive feel to help you leave a lasting impression on potential customers.

Portfolios

The landscape orientation of the 10.75″ x 8.35″ Standard, 14″ x 11″ Small Tabloid and 17″ x 11″ Large Tabloid offer a great canvas for displaying architectural renderings, fashion designs and large format photography as part of a portfolio. And with the same high quality digital printing you expect from MagCloud, you know you’ll be able to put your best foot forward when displaying your work.

Training Manuals

The ability for the pages of the Tabloid publications to rotate completely around the binding and lay flat makes them great for training manuals. As the trainee moves through their training, the wire binding will allow them to flip to the section they want to view and keep it displayed as the top page in the publication. This eliminates the need to hold open a book with one hand and also alleviates any concerns of losing one’s place.

Proof Books

We’ve discussed a number of ways wedding photographers can use MagCloud for their business, and our larger formats open up even more opportunities. What better way to encourage your clients to order larger format prints then to display their proofs in a large format book? Also, if you offer the option for professionally designed and hardbound photobooks to your clients, these larger formats offer an affordable way to show off how the book might look in print before investing in the expensive final copy.

Cookbooks

Similar to training manuals, the lay flat feature of the Tabloid products is also a benefit for cookbooks. It allows the cook to open the book to the recipe they want to make, so they won’t need to be flipping pages to find their place when they are in the midst of a recipe. The heavier paper stock is also a benefit for the durability of cookbooks, as the thicker pages aren’t as likely to rip if they should get stuck together over the years.

Brand Identity Guidelines

We’ve seen a number of brand identity guides published through MagCloud, detailing the appropriate colors, fonts and imagery that should be used for a particular brand. These guides are generally kept close by as a quick reference for designers, and as such can benefit greatly from the lay flat capabilities of these products. In addition, the larger page sizes of the Tabloid products offers twice as much space on a single page as our Standard products, allowing for more examples and detailed information within a given page of the publication. For example, instead of having fonts spread over multiple pages, they can be consolidated into a single page, making it easier for a designer to see all their options at once rather than having to flip through pages.

Media Kits

Show off the best of your business to the media in a large format they won’t soon forget. The professional feel of the heavier paper, combined with the high quality of MagCloud’s digital printing will make you look like a multimillion dollar company, without requiring a multimillion dollar budget.

Event Posters

Even with options like email newsletters, online ads, and direct mail, sometimes posters are the best way to get the word out about an event to a local audience. Whether you are advertising a concert, fundraising event, theater production or sports league sign ups, you can be sure to make a good impression with MagCloud’s full-color posters, printed in quantities of as few or as many as you need. And since no minimum order is required, you can order copies of your poster as you need them, and come back to order more when you run out.

Large Format Photography Prints

Similarly, the lack of a minimum order makes it possible to order just a single printed Poster if you’d like. This offers a great opportunity for professional and amateur photographers alike to order large prints of their photos for framing.

In-House Advertising Posters

In addition to advertising events out in the community, our Poster format can also be used in-house to highlight products and features in a high quality printed format. You can order a single copy if you only have one location, or if you have multiple locations, use our Ship to Group feature to ship one poster to each of your physical storefronts for a consistent display at an affordable cost.

Art Prints

Combining the Poster format with the MagCloud storefront offers a great opportunity for graphic designers and artists to sell their work. Content producers can add a markup beyond the $2 print cost, and for every print they sell, MagCloud will print and ship a copy to the customer directly and pay back the markup to the publisher at the start of each month.

We’re sure that there are many more ideas for how to use these products beyond what we’ve highlighted here, whether it’s using the Poster product to display the seating chart for your wedding or creating motivational posters for your classroom. If you have an idea that wasn’t mentioned, let us know in the comments below!

Go Big With Our Large Form Factor Products

11 Jul 201219 Aug 2015Patty62 Comments

MagCloud users deserve larger form factor products and we are happy to offer not just one but seven large product types.

Tabloid Product Family

At 11″ x 14″ trim size Small Tabloid is smaller than a standard newspaper but larger than our Standard letter-size product. Our Large Tabloid product has a 17″ x 11″ trim size offering more room for images and content. All Tabloid products are published on premium cover stock, have Wire-O Binding, and are ideal for large format portfolios, custom calendars, manuals and more.

Small Tabloid: 11″ x 14″ and 14″ x 11″ trim size options
Large Tabloid: 17″ x 11″ trim size
$0.36 per page with full color printing
8 to 90 pages in length in multiples of 2
$2.00 per copy for durable Wire-O Binding

Poster Product Family

Our full-color, double-sided Poster are printed on premium cover stock and come standard with UV coating giving them an extra sheen and making them more durable. Posters are ideal for promotions and special event keepsakes such as gallery exhibits, music festivals and fundraisers.

Available in 12″ x 18″ or 18″ x 12″ trim sizes
Full-color professional printing on 80# premium cover stock paper
Standard UV Coating front and back for increased durability
Each individual Poster is only $2 to print ($1.50 for orders of 20 or more).

Large Square

MagCloud is adding to its Square product family by offering a new large form factor Square product. At 12″ x 12″ trim size, this new product is great for one-of-a-kind portfolios, photo books or training material.

Available in 12″ x 12″ trim size
Durable Wire-O Binding
80# premium cover stock
8 to 90 pages in multiples of 2
$0.36 per page with full color printing
$2.00 per copy for Wire-O binding

Standard Landscape

Finally we are also expanding our Standard product line, with the addition of a landscape option. Measuring 11” x 8.5” and also using Wire-O Binding and premium #80 cover stock paper, this new product option is useful for portfolios, magazines, booklets, catalogs and more.

Available in 10.75″ x 8.25″ trim size
Durable Wire-O Binding standard
80# premium cover stock
8 to 90 pages in multiples of 2
$0.20 per page with full color printing
$2.00 per copy for Wire-O Binding

Note: Standard Landscape page and trim size will also be available as a Flyer option.

What do you think of these new products and how do you plan to use them? Let us know in the comments section below.

MagCloud Goes to the Head of the Class

16 May 201222 Oct 2013Patty3 Comments

MagCloud has been a friend of teachers, trainers and curriculum designers for some time.

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:

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:

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:

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.

Put MagCloud to Work: Publish a Business Brochure

12 Oct 201119 Jun 2012LaurenLeave a comment

A wise person once said ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression’. In fact, it just takes a few seconds or a cursory glance for a person to make a judgment about us. Our subsequent actions, behavior and professionalism may change that perception slightly, but not to a great extent.

So it stands to reason that how you portray your business to prospective clients is almost as important as how you do business.

Whether you are a fashion designer, a multi-media training company, an industry consultant, a yoga studio, or a niche photographer, putting your brand out there in a professional manner is extremely important.

One could argue that a brochure is just as important as your business card. It is an important marketing and sales tool, one in which you can do a little bragging and shamelessly present your business in the most positive light. It is your opportunity to create a lasting impression, so be sure that it is a good one.

Whether you are a company with a staff of 2, 20 or 20,000, MagCloud is a great tool for affordably publishing and distributing your brochures in a professional format. Our full-color, full-bleed print options in both standard and digest trim sizes give you the choice to create a robust brochure of multiple pages, or something simple and portable, like a four-paged digest handout. Digital distribution options also make it easy to share your brochure digitally to a desktop, laptop, the iPad, or other mobile device.

MagCloud’s ship-to-group feature makes it easy to drop-ship seasonal information or annual brochures to your clients around the world. Or, if you are a small business, its on-demand functionality means that you can distribute individual copies as needed to interested clients, allowing you to maintain a professional appearance without exceeding a limited budget.

Once you have these great logistics and beautiful print quality, the only thing holding you back is content, and design. Here are a few tips for gathering the content you should include in your brochures, and how to effectively assemble it into a professional-looking publication.

Getting Started:

Who are you talking to?

The first thing you need to know is what you want your brochure to accomplish. That ties directly into the target audience and what the message of the brochure will be. Identify your target audience and speak directly to them. Never try to address everyone. Once you know who your audience is, it will be easier to target your messaging and articulate that your product or service is a solution to their needs.

What is your message?

Always include a meaningful headline. Your headline should clearly communicate your main point so that even if the reader reads nothing else, they will understand what you are about.

Tell the whole story in your writing. Be concise, but remember to write your body copy in plain English. Don’t use jargon or industry lingo, instead pretend you’re explaining your message to a friend.

It’s helpful to use succinct, pithy copy. Avoid long sentences. Keep your message to the point. Use subheadings liberally, as they break up long copy and help draw a reader through the text. Ideally, a reader should be able to get a good grasp of your message by reading only the headings and subheadings.

Designing Your Brochure:

When all of your information is gathered and your writing is done, you can finally get down to the business of designing. You’ll want take into account the basic elements of good design – organization, consistent styling, balance, color, and so on.

Lay out your brochure cleanly and professionally. The design should draw the reader in and ease the process of reading. Remember that erring on the simple side will be easier for your consumer than an over-designed, distracting or hard-to-read brochure.

It’s great to use graphics to provide balance with text, but be sure they are relevant to your content. Use graphics that grab your reader’s attention and underline your message. Whether it’s a picture, logo, or stock image, just be sure it relates to your message and brand.

As with any design there are some things you’ll want to avoid. These include:

Avoid over-used typefaces, such as Arial and Helvetica. Read more in our recent blog post.
For content type, keep the point size under 12.
Don’t use more than three type faces in a brochure.
Generally don’t use more than one alignment.

If you feel lost…

Starting from scratch on a brochure can be challenging. Some great resources for design inspiration can come from other designs. Try searching the web for brochures in your industry and see how your design stacks up against the competition. You don’t want to copy someone else’s design, but it’s a great way to get inspired.

Also check out the stock templates available within most design and word-processing software. If you aren’t a super-savvy designer using InDesign or Quark, you’ll be amazed what you can do with Apple iWork Pages, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Publisher. For those who are confident in their skills with the software, but looking to get a more professional look, you can also investigate altering templates from Stocklayouts or Inkd, just be sure you are ready to tweak these designs as they are not all perfectly sized for output through MagCloud.

Have you published your company’s brochure through MagCloud, or found other great resources for inspiration and design? Please share them in the comments below.

A Few Inspirations For Your Portfolio

29 Sep 201125 Apr 2012Lauren1 Comment

As mentioned in our blog series, MagCloud is here to help publish your portfolio and provide options to create a big impression with a small format. So what’s the next step? We thought we’d offer a few examples to inspire you to start or update your existing portfolio. Portfolios are critical for designers, photographers and other small business owners who want to get exposure for their work and land new clients.

Whether you’re a musician, watercolor painter or even a blacksmith, you can capture a moment of creativity by browsing through more than 300 portfolios already on MagCloud. Draw additional inspiration from portfolios of other notable interior designers, graphic designers, and architects. Below are a few more examples of what your fellow publishers have been working on.

This collection of artist’s portfolios is a great example of using our digest format. For those conscious about budgets and the size of your portfolio, digest size provide an efficient way to share your best work in both print and digital formats.

As a small business, Sweet Pea Floral Creations showcases some of their favorite floral arrangements and highlights from client events and weddings.

Just graduated? Compile your best work for a great supplement to your resume, just like this advertising creative portfolio that Lauren Richer created.

Interior and architectural photographer David Duncan Livingston created various portfolios of his clean, welcoming photographs of homes, hospitality and products.

Below is a run-down of additional photography print portfolios that have caught our eyes.

The Art of Enzo Mondejar features an avant-garde take on portraiture by the gifted photographer, Enzo Mondejar. The images are creatively captivating and we hope they offer some inspiration for your print portfolio.
Nevertheless is the creative output of Peter Olschinsky, Verena Weiss and Gerhard Weib. This gorgeous layout design can teach us all more about how to present our images in the best light and perspective.
Finally, the Lolli POP Project is the work of photographer Massimo Gammacurta and is a great example of letting color explode onto a printed page and take off. Featured in Wired Magazine in December 2010, this project is both eye-catching and salivating.

What other portfolios have you seen that help inspire you to create your own? Share them with us in the comments below.

Publisher Spotlight: Sell With Your Ears

25 Aug 201125 Apr 2012Patty2 Comments

President Obama once asserted “small businesses are part of the promise of America.” At MagCloud, we wholeheartedly believe this statement and strive to provide small business the opportunity to market their products with style and quality without demanding a hefty investment.

One such small business owner who relies on MagCloud is author and sales strategist Bill Zipp who published his publication, Sell With Your Ears, through MagCloud as a way to market his business and provide a valuable resource. Sell With Your Ears presents Zipp’s unique approach to the marketplace and resource and tips for uncommon ways to build a smarter, more profitable business. It represents Zipp’s thought-leadership in his industry among business owners and key stakeholders responsible for generating revenue for their business – large or small.

As a business owner himself, Zipp is responsible for promoting his brand at all times. His publication is a conversation generator in networking settings and helps spread his message to even wider audiences. “I give my publication to clients to give to their friends, essentially serving as a sophisticated, and powerful business card.”

One element we are proud of at MagCloud is the quality of the printed materials we produce every day for publishers and readers. Time and again, we hear from our customers that the quality of the printed magazine, brochure, flier, etc. exceeded their expectations and that of their readers.

Additionally, when customers like Bill who publish with MagCloud, they are take advantage of the print on demand feature which affords customers the ability to fulfill orders as they come in vs. having piles of magazines or books in their homes and offices waiting to sell and ship. (Or as Zipp explains, “I don’t have to store thousands of books in my garage.”) Bulk printing is no longer the standard in publishing thanks to print on demand.

We encourage you to learn more about Bill Zipp’s publication here, and hope that you are inspired to become an even savvier marketer with MagCloud.

Have you ever considered publishing a book through MagCloud? What marketing materials are you publishing using MagCloud? Let us know by posting below.

Publisher Spotlight: Overland Sourcebook

29 Jul 201125 Apr 2012PattyLeave a comment

With more readers accessing their news, schedules and more on the go, having a publication available in print and digital is gaining importance and publishers are noticing.

As the Overland Expo team was developing their expo guide, they knew it was essential to use both print and digital formats when reaching out to their thousands of global attendees each year. They needed a service that provided online and print-on-demand resources for their readers.

That’s where MagCloud comes in.

Founded three years ago in Arizona by Roseann Hanson, the Overland Expo is held every spring and tailored to adventure travel enthusiasts. As part of this year’s Expo, their team published Overland Sourcebook, their first MagCloud magazine, because they saw that 34% of their email news subscribers access their news via iPhones with now iPads becoming another source. “We must be ready to provide material to this market,” she exclaimed. “We see the ‘writing on the wall’ to provide digital as well as print materials.”

As a 60-page listing for all things adventure – vehicles, motorcycles, accessories, camping equipment, services, information, trip planning, business consultants, fabricators, and much more – the Sourcebook became a convenient and well-received guide for the Expo’s attendees.

Hanson attributes their Sourcebook’s success to their marketing plan which combined traditional and social media efforts. “Word of mouth, in today’s high-paced, noisy world, just doesn’t work any more,” said Hanson.

Hanson noted how MagCloud “is so easy to use” for both their team and customers. Pointing out the speed and ease of uploading their digital files to MagCloud’s timely support, Hanson advised new MagCloud publishers to “test, test, test and give yourself plenty of time to get things right as well.” The Expo team also loved how easy it was to integrate the Sourcebook with iPad. “[Our readers] were very impressed and the quality is wonderful.”

If you love the outdoors and are always on the lookout for adventures that await in the unknown corners of the world, you can also own the inaugural issue of Overland Sourcebook for $13. Overland Expo donates a good portion of their proceeds from the event to support ConserVentures, a program in place to promote the exploration of the planet and conservation of its natural and cultural resources.

Publisher Spotlight: Plant Society Magazine

12 May 201025 Apr 2012MagCloud

From 20/30-something hipsters with first-time plots in big city community gardens to lifelong rare plant collectors and members of the most esoteric of gardening societies, anyone with a desire to dig around in dirt will find Matt Mattus’ newest venture, Plant Society Magazine, not just educational, but inspirational.

Mattus, an author, designer, brand creative, adventurer, naturalist and plant expert, is well known among green thumb types. His popular gardening blog,growingwithplants.com, attracts plant enthusiasts from around the world who are fans of his near-daily diary entries and enjoy the stunning photographs from his many gardens.

When Mattus learned about MagCloud’s print on demand service last year, he began thinking a print magazine would be a perfect extension of his blog — a way to provide yet more in-depth knowledge and greater detail about connoisseur and collectable plants, with a bit of food, travel, design and home and garden décor mixed in for good measure.

“These days, mainstream gardening magazines are too commercial and ordinary,” Mattus says. “Plant collectors and rare plant enthusiasts want something unique and original. They’re curious about discovering new things.”

And Mattus is just the one to uncover anything exciting and unusual. As a creative director at Hasbro, it’s Mattus’ job to discover new trends in the making — and to keep the company a few steps ahead. He has even written a book on the subject: Beyond Trend – How to Innovate in an Over Designed World.

It’s a mission that has become his personal passion, especially when it comes to gardening. A self-described “hortigeek,” Mattus lives on his family’s 100-year-old farm in Worcester, Mass., where for the past 40 years he has collected and grown rare plants and actively participated in obscure plant societies — Androsace Society, anyone? He planted his first seeds on the farm at the age of 5 and remembers when the zinnias were taller than he was.

His own experiences are a sharp contrast to the modern science efficiencies so common in the gardening world today.

“With the rise of mass-produced micro-propagated plants that are all the same at every home center around the world, I can see dumbing-down happening everywhere,” Mattus says. “They’re selling ‘supertunias’ and sheep-sized Chrysanthemums. Gardening has morphed into a pastime that feels more like disposable decorating. But I know there’s still a huge population of gardeners out there who still honor the art and science of it all.”

It’s this population that Mattus reaches with his blog and now with Plant Society Magazine. He writes all the content, focusing only on plants that he, himself, has grown. And he pulls images from his vast collection of more than 10,000 photographs he has taken of plants from his greenhouses and gardens. He organizes his photographs by species and time of year.

“I have so much content, it’s a little overwhelming,” Mattus says. “I’m obsessive when it comes to plants. I photograph every step of the growing process, from planting the seeds to tending to them — even how I display them in pots and vases. With MagCloud, I don’t have to design something six months in advance. I can shoot my cover the same day that I upload my files to the MagCloud website.”

Mattus published his first issue, High Summer, in 2009, featuring 75 pages of in-depth information about, and photographs of, exhibition chrysanthemums, dahlias, pelargonium, nerines and crocosmia.

His Autumn issue focuses on cultivating miniature species Narcissus for cold greenhouses and alpine beds, odd and rare winter blooming bulbs, Cyclamen species in pots and winter shrubs for color.

Mattus promotes the magazine, which also will include Spring, featuring the genus Primula, seed growing, Corydalis and rare Japanese orchids, and mid-Winter editions, on his blog and through his Twitter account.

“I love being my own editor and art director,” he says. “I also appreciate being in charge of my own advertising. You’ll never see me writing about organic gardening and then running an ad for fertilizer on the next page.”

Mattus still recalls the day his first issue arrived in his mailbox. “It came in a plastic bag, and it looked like a real magazine,” he says. “I work with printers all the time. The quality I get from MagCloud is as good as anything out there. I would recommend MagCloud to even the pickiest of designers.” Mattus also appreciates the ease with which MagCloud handles all the order processing and distribution. “Anyone in the US, Canada or UK can order issues direct from the MagCloud website, and can even pay directly with a credit card or Paypal,” he notes. “MagCloud prints to order, and in five days or fewer, the magazine is printed, bound and mailed directly to the reader.”

Without MagCloud’s self-publishing service, Mattus says a magazine like his, with its relatively smaller run and niche market and lack of a traditional distribution channel, wouldn’t be possible.

“I understand the need for big publishers to remain profitable,” Mattus says. “But the publishing business is changing so fast. Self-publishing is now much more accepted in our new digital world of blogs, Twitter and Facebook. For me and for the readers I want to reach, MagCloud is the perfect solution.

“Frankly, I had no idea how the magazine would be received,” he adds. “I expected both positive and critical comments, just as I get on my blog. And that’s terrific. My favorite comments are from readers who tell me that Plant Society Magazine is better than the fancy British gardening magazines. One reader said, ‘Finally, a well-designed and informative magazine that not only shows me step-by-step tasks, but that actually teaches me how to grow something out of the ordinary.’

“That’s exactly what I’m striving for.”

Check out the latest issue!