Overview

Your aunt and uncle have a vegetable stand at the farmers’ market in their hometown of Zeeland. The farmers’ market has been relatively successful, but at its last meeting, the market’s advisory board decided to work on publicizing the market more effectively. Your aunt, who is on the board, e-mailed you to ask you for advice. After you talk with her on Skype for a while, you offer to create the first issue of the newsletter if the board can gather the raw materials needed (drafts of stories, letters from customers and growers, images, and so on). You’ll edit these materials as needed, create a layout, and produce the first issue. They’ll find someone else to produce later newsletters using yours as the model.

The Zeeland Farmers’ Market runs from midspring through midfall in the town square, where local farms sell directly to community members and tourists. During peak seasons in the summer, the market will host 40 or more stalls and thousands of visitors a day.

The newsletter is where the farmers’ market will inform customers (and potential customers) about what’s going on at the market, ranging from news about what produce or other goods are coming into season, to short biographies of local farms, tips on how to use what the customers have bought, and more. Essentially, the newsletter aims to help people feel engaged with the market. People who shop at farmers’ markets tend to value local economies, small farms and businesses, high quality food, and community. They’re not necessarily of any particular political leaning — they run from far-left tree huggers to socially conservative folk nostalgic for simpler times.

During the project, you’ll need to develop an overall layout for the newsletter and develop several sample pages for a single issue based on content provided to you (see Raw Materials). Because the writers of newsletters such as this are not professional writers or photographers, you’ll likely need to revise and edit the raw content so that it works well in the newsletter.

The newsletter itself: Four pages (two sheets of paper if printed, front and back for each). Assume that you would have this professionally printed on one sheet of 17” x 22” paper that’s folded to create a four-page newsletter. You’ll be creating a PDF file, so you don’t need to worry about actually printing the newsletter — your PDF can just include four 8.5” x 11” pages.