Magazine Designer (page layout, graphic design, illustration experience)

Information for the business: A magazine devoted to personal, professional, and spiritual development
Industry: Publishing/Journalism
Design details: please see brief.
Ideas for the visual style: please see brief.

Extra notes:

Hi! I'm looking for a new designer to do the page layout and cover for my monthly magazine. If you think you could handle this let's talk.

Please note this is NOT a 'from scratch' project. We have numerous Indesign CC Files that serve as templates for you and you will not be creating bespoke illustrations either as we have a bank of original art work which belong to us. It takes me 5 days to do this work around full time client work - and I would expect this to be just 3 full time days of your time. Therefore I cannot entertain quotes which exceed £250-£350 as this is a monthly, regular piece of work for you which has its main nuts and bolts set up and just needs someone to refresh it each month with the new content.

PLEASE NOTE - A SKYPE INTERVIEW WILL APPLY FOR THE ROLE

About our magazine:
Hat Trick Magazine is a publication devoted to spiritual, personal and professional development. It has a feminine flair to it, but isn't overtly feminine nor is it just for women. Its content has a strong basis in New Age themes like A Course In Miracles and positive psychology. I am the owner and editor, and we publish this monthly magazine one month in advance just like print magazines. I would really like to move this magazine to an app and/or other paid format. So if you have this skill, that would be a serious advantage. The person I am looking for will be someone I speak to regularly and have a strong relationship with. I am not looking for just someone who gets the job done, but the right fit for what we are about. Sometimes nailing covers is a tricky business as are tweaking tables of contents. It's creative but it's a process which we must work collaboratively on, so I need to have a really great working relationship this individual and on that basis, I'm looking for someone with a great personality, who is outgoing, can collaborate, and above all is reliable.

About the process:
We have contributors that send us their monthly content to a content email address. Some contributors prefer for us to go directly to their blogs and so we go there every month and pull content there. This content is now copy edited and saved in google docs by our copy editor. She even suggests some pull quotes for you. You will pull this content from the respective document on google docs, apply graphics from our file of original art work, add in flairs like drop caps, pull quotes, change colours of art, etc to make it fresh where you feel inspired to do so, and sometimes you'll need to make decisions how best to enhance and style each article. You will use Indesign CC and I do have source files that can be shared with you as a template so you're never starting from scratch. We have a bank of graphics and illustrations that you can choose to create the magazine and make every column special and unique on a monthly basis. Sometimes we find that there is an odd number of pages and you will need to be able to quickly knock up beautiful filler pages consisting of unique graphics and quotes to create inspiring memes.

I am a positive, fun, free spirit and ideally you will be too. I am looking for someone I can trust to do a job that I can do myself. This is a lot of trust for a control freak like me! So it's kind of like looking for a new family member. It has to be the right fit.

The Output You Will Deliver:
* One Indesign file each month, to be saved in our dropbox file
* One PDF file to be uploaded to our current magazine host (PDF name saved in the correct format as this drives the URL, uploading this PDF, typing in the title, pressing publish)
* Please note you will be left to get on with the magazine but some collaboration will be required on the cover, table of contents, and ad hoc feedback.

Our Style and Quality:
* Recent example of our Magazine: https://issuu.com/hat.trick/docs/mag2016.5
* You must be of a suitable skill set that you can complete this magazine starting from our template within 1-2 weeks. This is not a job for a newbie who will take a month. Content does not arrive until the 15th, you will need to have it done by the 1st.
* You must use InDesign CC
* You must use photoshop and possibly Lightroom, and be capable of tasks such as air brushing or image manipulation
* You must use dropbox (we have a corporate account and can give you access to the folders you need)
* You must be willing to collaborate easily and take direction from me on tables of contents and also covers
* We want to own the source files. This is so that if ever we need to correct an error or print a retraction, we can go back and do so easily. It also means we can easily use graphics elsewhere like on our website (which is currently being redeveloped).