Never again will we take a textbook for granted. This massive project started in May, and the files were sent to the printer’s August 16. But we didn’t just produce the book in English—oh no, that would be too easy. We had it translated and assembled both languages simultaneously. The Introduction to Magazine Publishing book is available in English and in French.

The interior design changed slightly to account for longer words in French, and the “your turn” heading design made more sense in French with the highlight switched. Yet the design was intentionally created to be quickly adapted across a variety of languages.

Although we hired professional translators, we want to thank our high school French teacher, Madame Lippert. Even the little bits that we remember helped us format the text and keep track of the translation.

This book challenged our design and organization skills. It forced us to develop a system to track which chapters in which language had been put into InDesign, edited, proofed, updated, and proofed again. Without diving into the gritty details of the production process, let’s just say the color-coded tags option in Mac OS is priceless.

Fonts used: Akrobat and Lora.

Because this book is a combined and updated edition of three training manuals produced by Magazine Training International, we can’t count how many people were involved with the content creation.

The beautiful cover was designed by our friend James Njoroge.