Bio

Janine Vangool is Calgary-based graphic designer, publisher and editor of UPPERCASE, a magazine for the creative and curious. In addition to her magazine, UPPERCASE, publishes books on design, illustration and craft. With so many projects on the go, Janine manages it all in Evernote. Janine has kindly offered Evernote users a special discount on subscription. Use the code “Evernote” for $10 off a quarterly UPPERCASE subscription starting with issue #14. Janine will also be speaking at the Evernote Trunk Conference in San Francisco on August 24th. Don’t miss it!

Watch the video to hear Janine’s story, then read about the details of her process.

I use Evernote, Everywhere

• Mac
• iPhone
• iPad

Evernote makes my magazine come to life

I use Evernote to edit, publish and distribute a magazine

I worked as a freelance designer for many years and grew tired of designing for other people’s content. I had always wanted to publish my own books and magazines and based on the success of my blog, I decided to pursue the dream. I just crossed my fingers and hoped that a small percentage of my readers would subscribe to a print publication. It took off more quickly than I ever thought it would! These days, I run the magazine full time and have “retired” from client work. Evernote is the brain that stores all my ideas.

The beginning: from collecting ideas to assigning content

• Evernote is where I can deposit all potential ideas. I use the Web Clipper all the time to capture things I see on the web, research articles, and grab inspiration.
• I manage the article submission process entirely in Evernote. Whenever someone submits an idea or article via my website, it gets automatically forwarded to my Evernote account and into specific notebooks, where I can review the text and attachments and then categorize, tag and sort the submission. Having submissions go directly into Evernote is such a time-saver! [Learn how to email to Evernote]
• Evernote helps me decide on each issue’s central theme. As ideas, photos, and articles pitches start getting filtered with various tags, I start seeing trends that help me develop themes of each new issue. For example, I had lots of notes about linocut, tools and carving and so issue 11 had a theme of labor-intensive illustration and sharp objects. Issue 13 is focused on how weather affects creativity.
• I use Evernote to assign content and find location-specific contributors. All submissions get tagged in Evernote and if someone emails me wanting to be a contributor, they get tagged as a writer and/or photographer and I write in their location as well. If I need a photographer in Boston for an upcoming issue, I know how to find them quickly by doing a quick search in my Evernote account.
• I use audio notes on my phone. If I’m walking from home to my office and I have an idea, I make an audio note in Evernote. It helps me be creative, even on the go.
• I create templates in Evernote. I have a template content list in my Evernote account that I use when planning an issue. At any given time, I’m working on several issues and this template helps make sure that all magazine columns have assigned content.
• I don’t rely on my inbox. Because everything of importance gets sent to my Evernote account, I don’t need to rely on my inbox. It’s much easier to find things in Evernote, where it’s organized and tagged. Also, as a visual person, I appreciate that Evernote is such a great repository of images. Everything is in one place and nothing is ever lost.

Creation, distribution and archiving

• I have a checklist for every magazine issue. Until recently, I was a one-woman show so I had to juggle everything from editing to designing to distribution. I have a huge checklist for every issue where I can keep track of the progress of the writing, illustration and design with colored notations for in-progress activities and Note Links to related notes inside of my account. [Learn how to create a checklist in Evernote]
• Evernote helps me clean up my desktop. When I’m working with tons of images and documents, they don’t take over my desktop. Rather, they’re all in Evernote where I can easily visually scroll through multiple PDFs. This makes it much easier to, say, plan the next issue’s cover.
• I use Evernote to collaborate. When I work with an illustrator or writer, I create a note pertaining to the assignment and drop in links and images to help communicate the project. I simply share the public note URL or email it to the contributor. I now have someone helping me with posting content to my blog and we collaborate in a shared notebook to keep track of blog post ideas and publication schedules. [Learn how to share notes in Evernote]
• I track the magazine’s distribution with Evernote. When a magazine issue is released, there are 10,000 copies and all of them need to go somewhere, often with special requirements for various shipments. All the details of where every issue is going (wholesale, subscribers, etc.) are in Evernote. When I see that all of the issues have been allocated for, I email the note to the printer and they take care of shipping.
• Evernote helps me get ahead of the game. Now that I’ve been using Evernote for three years, I’m starting to plan and ahead and categorize future issue themes rather than flying by the seat of my pants. I’ve accumulated so much content in Evernote that I’m already working on issue 16! This saves me a lot of stress because it’s much easier to assign content and keep the process moving forward. Plus, I have a strong vision of what’s going to be in the magazine by seeing it come together in Evernote.
• My entire magazine archive is in Evernote. I’ve been using Evernote since issue 2 and we just released issue 13. Every issue has an Evernote notebook filled with articles, photos, illustrations, and everything related to the creation, production and distribution of that issue. It is a searchable database to the published articles, which is very helpful now that there are so many completed issues. I have nearly 3000 notes in my account.
• I even use Evernote to plan events. I co-hosted an event at Alt Summit this past year and used Evernote to stay on top of all of to the details including room diagrams, supplies, itineraries, etc. Planning a party was a full-time job, so I created an Alt tag in my Evernote account that helped me keep track of everything related to the event. [Learn how to plan an event with Evernote]

It’s just my habit to put everything into Evernote. It’s my creative repository of ideas and the place where the magazine is conceptualized. Without Evernote, it wouldn’t be possible.