Let us introduce ourselves: Meet the Letter from the Editor group

Writing the letter from the editor is a high-pressure job. This letter must capture the essence of the magazine, the class, and information design as a whole -- all in one page. Here is a little about how Kaitlyn and Lauren decided to do that.

Lauren and Kaitlyn

What is the letter from the editors is supposed to accomplish?

Well, the letter from the editor is the first thing that people read after they see the cover and the identity. So, we put the identity into words and described what the magazine is all about. We wanted to provide an introduction to the magazine, but also an introduction to information design. We figured that our audience wouldn’t know much about information design, so we tried to keep that in mind.

Why is having a letter from the editor important for a magazine?

It sets the tone for the magazine. It gives the readers a road-map of what is in the magazine. Not as directly as the table of contents does. It’s more of the feeling or the experience of the magazine. The audience we are considering are very general and broad with little to no understanding of information design. We think the letter is important to set up how we understand information design, so that readers can get the best understanding of the content.

So, who did you consider the audience to be?

People who know someone in the class, who know something about information design but maybe don’t understand what is is or how it works. We also imagined students using the magazine in job interviews, as well as to explain information design to loved ones. Basically, the audience is very broad, and includes anyone with a basic or low level of understanding about information design.

How did you decide to explain what the magazine is about?

We took the name of the magazine and the rationale behind the name and used that to really guide our letter. Since the magazine is called “effekt,” and the tagline is “effective design affecting people,” we wanted to talk about how design affects people. We talked about how information design is invisible, multidisciplinary, and ubiquitous. A few of the features talked about how information designers see the world, and also how information design can be found in places you might not expect it, so we talked about that too. The magazine is about how information design is prominent in our everyday lives but is also invisible.

Additionally, we wanted to explain information design and show the passion that the class has for it. One of the quotes from the letter is “think critically. Find empathy. Take action.” Even though information design is so diverse, we wanted to make it as simple as possible.

Qualities that describe this group of information designers.

How did you work as a group to complete these? What strategies did you implement?

That was actually pretty difficult. It’s hard to write something with more than one person. There were two of us with two different ideas. First, we sat down and had an open discussion about the purpose of the letter and the information that we thought was important for the audience to know about the magazine. So, together we developed a vague outline, which included definitions, our class, common attributes, and a brief overview of themes in the magazine. Once we had that, we worked individually to write what we each thought the definitions, statements about the class, common attributes, and themes should be. We ended up having a lot of the same ideas so we mashed them together and we had our introduction. This gave us a good starting place to go from and established our tone. Lauren wrote the first draft. Then Kaity expanded it and wrote the next draft. We are currently working on our final draft.

What went well?

It was easy to write together. Initially, we weren’t so sure. How do you decide whose idea is better than another idea? It was surprising how well we wrote together, and how many ideas we had in common. Because we had outlined everything at the beginning, it was a piece of cake.

What challenges did you encounter?

Getting started was hard. We were apprehensive because we didn’t know how to start and write together. But once we got our ideas down, things were easy.

What advice would you give to students doing this next year?

It’s very important to define your process in the beginning. You need that guide otherwise you will just be pulling things out of thin air. If you start with an outline, you can easily deal with the uncertainty of having many ideas and multiple authors.

What is there left for you to do?

Just the final draft. We recently got put in charge of the inside front cover, inside back cover and source page, so we have to create a link between these and the letter. We also have do the page layout for our letter.

Inside front cover

A nearly complete draft of the letter from the editor.