On June 8, 2020 | By Maryellen Lazzaro | Design, E-Newsletters, Hospitals, Hot Off the Press, Tips
Welcome to the digital-only version of “TBHC Times”
The Brooklyn Hospital Center keeps Lazzaro Designs on its toes with a myriad of projects. This project was particularly interesting.
We brought TBHC times into the digital space and no longer are producing print versions. Each issue is blasted to the house via email and put on the hospital’s intranet. This allowed the newsletter to come out more frequently (no longer needing to wait for other hospital departments to submit their articles), no longer being confined to a 6- or 8-page 8.5 x 11 newsletter format, as well as being able to have more current content especially photo essays showcasing employees. Given this change the opportunity was ripe to update the banner and make some other design modifications.
The premier digital issue (as shown at left) contained eight articles of varying lengths but all designed with an 8.5″ width. This allowed articles to be stacked.
Now the challenge began to have the newsletter not become distorted and unreadable when emailed or placed on the employee’s intranet as well as be able to read on a laptop or desktop and not need any click throughs (so single page pdfs were not an option). Sounds simple, right? It wasn’t. The premier issue was 65″ in depth. So placing the 65″ jpeg in an email or on the internet presented problems because the two platforms (Mac and PC) in which the jpeg would be viewed didn’t play well with each other! Via trial and error, a workaround was found by slicing the long jpeg into multiple horizontal pieces and then stacking the smaller jpegs. That’s why the design features horizontal white bars between articles. This allowed the slices to be hid within those bars and it worked brilliantly making it appear to the viewer it was one, long, not interrupted newsletter. Voila!!
