When I became Production Editor in 2016, the Australasian Journal of American Studies was designed and produced from a Microsoft Word template. Lucas Thompson, who was managing editor of the journal at the time, had been admiring the Cormac McCarthy Journal from Penn State University Press. We talked about what we liked in that design, and I began sketching out what our journal could become.
I had already trained in InDesign as I had written my PhD; and, in the days before AI and its personalised assistance, had benefited from the help of many hours of lynda.com courses. (Lynda was acquired by LinkedIn in 2015 and hos become LinkedIn Learning.)
As academic publishing evolved, various constraints of the original design became apparent. More detailed and better author information was needed; ORCID IDs should probably be added; the typography had its own constraints. For instance, in order to make the em dashes appear the way I wanted them to, I horizontally expanded the em dash for the body typeface, Edita (designed by Pilar Cano for TypeTogether), by 140%.
Typesetting’ each issue meant reading through manuscripts with an editorial eye, catching inconsistencies, applying the Chicago Manual of Style, managing the intricate choreography of footnotes and citations, coordinating with multiple people across different timezones, responding to revision requests, and preparing files for both print and digital distribution.
New sections required new designs, and decisions had to be made about the status of each. Should reviewers have biographies? Should contributors who wrote short reflections (‘Works that Changed Me’) have biographies too? For many years, those decisions were my bailiwick; however, as the journal evolves, I feel it is time to pass the production on to someone with a fresh perspective. My last issue will be Volume 44(2) in 2025.
