In this short article I want to share with you and document for myself how long it takes me to write, illustrate and schedule 10 articles for the Service Design Magazine.

What is the Service Design Magazine

The Service Design Magazine is a little online publication that I’m running since 2015. The publication has about 200 articles in it. It’s a place I use to store ideas about Service Design. With the time I use it more and more as a library for little Service Design rule of thumbs that anyone can implement.

How long does it take to prepare 10 articles

The short answer to this question is that it takes just under 4 hours to write, illustrate and prepare for publication 10 articles.

3 hours and 11 Minutes for writing

I’ve seen that it is easier to break down every task and repeat it than do the whole process every time. What do I mean with this? It’s quicker for me to first write all 10 articles, then illustrate all 10 articles, and then schedule all articles than doing all three tasks for each article and start again with the next one.

When it comes to the writing as I have already the title and the reference for the idea written it’s pretty quick to write the texts. And obviously the articles I write for the Service Design Magazine are pretty short texts. 

These articles serve as a first prototype for texts that I will then later re-work for paid publications like my courses or books.

Writing the first draft in the Ginger Page app on the iPad as it checks my terrible spelling at least a tiny bit.  After that, the text is imported in the Medium App.

44 Minutes for the illustrations

With the years I’ve developed my own little visual language for the Service Design Magazine. Simple lines, green as an accent color and gray to create some fake shadows. That’s it.

When it’s possible I try to include something a bit funny in the illustration, but sometimes I’ll just illustrate exactly what the title says without further jokes or references.

The goal here is not to create the best illustration possible, just something unique that maybe gives a smile.

I use the iPad app “Paper” to draw my little illustrations with the pencil

12 Minutes for the scheduling

I publish the articles twice a week. One comes out each Tuesday and one each Thursday. Fortunately, Medium has a scheduling option that makes it possible for me to time the articles I write in advance. 

The only problem I have at the time is that I can’t schedule the articles from the iPad and have to do it from a desktop. Even via the browser, the scheduling option isn’t visible on the iPad.

Read the latest article

You can read the latest article on the Service Design for free. Usually, these are short one to two Minutes reads.