[glbtq]

Blithe House Quarterly Seeks Graphic Designer

Contact: Aldo Alvarez at ADAlvarez@aol.com


*Blithe House Quarterly : queer fiction lives here* ( http://www.blithe.com/ ), the premier LGBT literary magazine, is looking for a graphic/web design student or pro-bono design professional to design its 2005 volume of four issues. This is a volunteer appointment.

Currently in its eighth year of online publication, Blithe House Quarterly features new short stories by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) authors -- both emerging and established. With an average of over 24,000 readers per issue, Blithe House Quarterly is the most widely read of LGBT literary periodicals. OUT Magazine has called us "the central publishing arm of new queer fiction." A recipient of Encyclopaedia Britannica's Internet Guide Award, we are also a featured site on internet hubs.

Suite101.com writes: "Blithe House Quarterly is an electronic magazine up to the standards of print." In fact, our literary standards our higher than those of many print media. We publish LGBT fiction not as a genre or ghetto, but as a literature that can stand by any other in its quality and innovation.

The one year graphic design volunteer commitment to BHQ is limited to working with the publisher on the design premise for 2005's issues, designing and building a cover page and four basic template pages for four individual 2005 issues, and doing 8 animated banners per issue. (The stories and the copy are coded by the publisher and pasted into the appropriate pages.) The new designer doesn't have to do any rethinking of the site architecture. We're fairly old skool when it comes to code, as it has to be something the publisher can handle with entry-level Dreamweaver and Adobe skills. The design has to enable on-the-fly changes to the copy in HTML or through Illustrator/Photoshop.

Our design concept is usually a pun on "house", "housewares". "architecture", "home appliances". "interior design", etc. One year, we looked like a booklet of wallpaper samples; one issue had a house plan; another year, every issue was the diagram for a kitchen appliance, etc. 2003's theme used a branding logo we'd like to keep for 2005's issues. However, the designer can also come up with something completely different, as long as it is within our idiom.

Naturally, whoever designs the issues gets credit and a link on the front page and in the bio page, as well as credit and bio in all magazine publicity. The publisher also writes recommendation letters that have served people in endeavors that followed their tenure in the magazine. This appointment is a perfect vehicle for someone looking for a senior or thesis project or for a professional looking for pro-bono work. Our previous design intern got his Master's based on the work he did for Blithe House Quarterly.

If you have an interest in the pro-bono position, or have questions about it, please contact Executive Editor and Publisher Aldo Alvarez at ADAlvarez@aol.com.