L&R is more than mechanics

I first published a barbershop bulletin in the Far Western District. When I became a Barbershopper I brought some experience of amateur journalism, having published a model airplane club newsletter. I offered to become bulletin editor when I petitioned to join the chapter. The chapter bulletin had just become defunct. I sometimes think my offer to publish the bulletin was the reason I passed my audition, for the audition didn’t go very well, notwithstanding hours in the garage, exiled by my wife, rehearsing 30 or 40 times “Shine on Me” with the Barberpole Cat tape.

I used a word processing program and had a graphic for every story for which there wasn’t a photograph. I simply pasted the stories end-to-end. Occasionally I would do something clever, like word-wrap a graphic. The bulletin was very popular with the chapter, so I thought I would enter the BETY to see if I could do even more for the chapter. (There was just a tiny bit of ego involvement also.)

I did well in Content and G&S, but bombed in L&R, finishing third of six. That sounds pretty good until you realize that FWD has large and small bulletin contests, and I was third of three in the large bulletin contest!

The L&R judges gave me lots of advice about improving the mechanical things of L&R, the things enumerated in the score sheets, and I worked on them. I entered the BETY again, expecting to do considerably better. I did only marginally better and was puzzled.

Many years later, under the tutelage of friend Tom Pearce, former PROBEmoter editor and IBC winner, I became aware that L&R is more than mechanics. In personal correspondence and his lessons in PROBEmoter called “J-School” I began to see the light.

First, Tom told me to eschew the word processing program and use a drawing or page-making program. I was reluctant, for I was very comfortable with my word processing program. But, with a leap of faith, because Tom’s advice had always been cogent, I did it. Now I understand his advice. Blocks of text are objects. If things don’t fit or simply don’t look right, you simply move a block of text to a new position, changing the dimensions if you please.

Second, Tom taught me that each page should be a marriage of text and graphics, pleasing to the eye. If you back off from the page so that you only see images, and you turn the page upside down, and still it’s a pleasing composition, then you have, at least in the visual arts sense, a good page. Only then will you understand the score sheet item that says you shouldn’t have graphics in two columns side by side.

I’m an engineer, not attuned to the visual arts. But with these two suggestions I think I have improved the visual appeal of my present bulletin by an order of magnitude. At least I look at the old bulletins I produced and was so proud of and say, “Ugly! No wonder I bombed!”