Thoughts on the design of an employee newsletter?

[njoay]

Hello all,

I'm not sure if this is the right venue to post my question, but I'm looking for ideas or recommendations in publishing an employee newsletter for our company. Currently I design and work off a template I created in InDesign and then export it as a pdf and it's being viewed online.

The content and somewhat of the structure changes with each edition, but the images and the cover page constantly changes. Since it is viewed online I had initial thoughts of making static HTML/CSS pages but since the images are constantly changing and moved around even in the layout, I thought a structured HTML page might defeat the purpose. And with all the constant changes, I wouldn't know what type of structure to build. Any suggestions or thoughts on this? I was also just thinking of suggesting to just set up a blog, just to make things easier and the employees could also post comments (which I don't know if that would be a good or bad thing).

Just thought I'd ask for any ideas. How are other employee newsletters being distributed (besides in print)? Sorry for the long post. If I can post this on a more precise forum please feel free to let me know as well.

Thanks

[hybrid101]

i'm with wordpress if you're going to use a blog. loads of customizability.

or you could make a flash frontend with php and xml backends;)

[njoay]

hey hybrid,

thanks so much for your response! if you don't mind could you elaborate more on making a flash front end? do you mean like a flipbook or so? i do have a little experience with xml but not so much with php. can you point me in the right direction? would i simply dynamically call the content with php and xml?

my bee-yatch of a boss would like me to present my ideas in writing. should i present it in a creative brief type of way? any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

thanks again!

[CanisMajor]

One question I have is does your boss want the employees to have the ability to print it out?

[njoay]

see below...

[njoay]

hi CanisMajor,

Yes, my bee-yatch of a boss (please address her appropriately...j/k) would like the employees to print it out.

Good question!

Thanks!