Ed. Magazine Receives CASE Gold Medal

Ed. magazine has received the top honor for cover design from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). According to CASE, the award recognizes, "creativity and overall excellence in design of individual print publications..." Among the publications included for consideration are alumni magazines, annual reports, marketing materials, and books. The fall 2010 issue of Ed. won the only cover design gold medal in this year's competition.

The "Pulling Back the Cover" text from the fall 2010 issue explains some of the challenges that went into printing a braille magazine cover, something believed to be an industry first.

Dot Dilemma
When we decided to use braille on the cover of this issue of the magazine, we had no idea how much back and forth there would be between our office, Ed alum and cover story star David Ticchi, our printer in Vermont, and the National Braille Press, a nonprofit publisher located in Boston that had agreed to emboss the braille dots onto the cover. Knowing that books have been printed in braille since the late 1820s, we thought: How hard would one cover be?

But the questions flew back and forth for days: Is there a standard size braille font? Does it matter if we capitalize letters or bold them? Will 100 lb. text paper “hold” the dots or do we need to use something heavier? Will the dots get crushed once the magazine gets bound — something both printers feared could happen?

Some of the questions were easier to answer than others. Yes, explained Diane Croft, Ed.M.’81, vice president of publishing for National Braille Press, there is a standard size braille “cell,” with each dot measuring 0.02 inches. And yes, cell attributes — bold and capital, for example — do matter. A test run on the braille press showed us that the raised dots came out fine on the paper we normally use for our covers. The harder question — would the dots get crushed during the binding process — had us debating for days whether or not to attempt braille on a standard magazine cover, something, apparently, that is rarely done. In the spirit of leaders like David Ticchi, who has never taken the easy road, we decided to take a chance. With fingers crossed, we await the answer!

Editor’s Note: Confused about the cover? Feel like you’re in the dark? That was part of our thinking as we brainstormed how to design the cover. So often, people with disabilities are not considered when choices are made. We thought we’d turn the tables on our readers. And since we know you’re curious, the headline on the cover says visionary.