I found some public domain magazine layout files and spent a little bit making a short mockup, mainly as a proof of concept:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/144394990/Intermittens-1-29-layout-concept?secret_password=v5ooyboitonkpl0m3ssthoughts:
-The drawback of this layout is that almost none of the submissions perfectly fit the article space. It reminds me of why real magazine editors require articles to be a certain length - 200 words, 500 words, 1000, 2000 words. It's taking a lot of coaxing to get the material to fit. Obviously the template can be screwed with, but the more of the original layout we can use, the less work this will be.
-This underscores the need to pick out which content is IN vs which content gets CUT. If people could please please nominate their favorite stuff, it would make these decisions much much easier. Dingo, I know you said "I don't want to be an editor" but you gotta get your hands dirty! Don't make me do this alone!
-The majority of the submissions are fractalcult related, which almost makes me want to make it a fractalcult themed issue. But I also don't want to be a spotlight hog, and there's a substantial amount of material NOT from fractalcult. Could use some advice about how to position this stuff. I always hate laying out a project that's supposed to be a collaborative group thing and then putting in 80% of my own content, you know?
-The current cover is a riff on the internet meme "I am 12 and what is this". I love trip's cover design, I just don't think it's a very good joke. It's not terribly Discordian and if you're actually familiar with the rather obscure meme, you'd realize we're not even using it correctly --- unless the magazine is filled with adult content.
-On the note of content - Magazine layout suggests magazine style articles. Most of our submissions aren't really magazine themed. I mean, magazine articles are usually things like tips, advice, journalism, stuff like that. Fiction doesn't look quite right in this format. A few of the submissions work perfectly - like bwansen's discordian chakras - because it reads like a wacky health article. I can't help feeling that if we had a real theme, it could act like a writing prompt which we could use to solicit a few more submissions.