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The Suisun Valley Review was established as a way for the students of Solano Community College to learn the art and craft of editing a literary journal while putting together their own magazine once a year. Since the first issue was published in 1981, student editors have collaborated on over thirty issues of SVR, carefully selecting the contents from new and established writers from across the U.S. and abroad. The students are also directly involved with creating the overall design aesthetic and narrative of each issue. Each spring, all of their hard work and endless creative energy is repaid with a bound collection of prose and poetry, sold and kept as a testament to sleepless nights.
SVR's 2014 Submission Guidelines

Friday, March 16, 2012

Progress on the Layout Front

Over the last few weeks, some of our graphics-savvy editors took the time to put together mock layouts (in other words, possible ways that we could format our magazine). There were a wide variety of colors, fonts, spacing and alignments.

This last Monday, the committee assigned to designing the layout of the inside of the magazine (go Team Innards!) put together a semi-final draft of what our layout could/should/might look like. It incorporated ideas from all of the mocks that were previously submitted.

Then we threw the semi-final mock onto the big screen for the rest of the editors to review. They had some additional suggestions, but for the most part, everyone seemed to like what had been done. We will give the layout one more pass before we all give it the salutary nod of completion and turn our focus to something else.

There’s still going to be some continual, inevitable tweaking of the internal layout throughout the next two months, so the job’s not “done” done. However, we’re confident that the final layout will be satisfying and pristine. And maybe a teensy bit flashy, but that will depend on the colors we choose, which will likely be taken from the cover. That will be one of our foci for next week: picking out which of our art submissions we think might be good cover choices.