Outsourcing Ad Production

Jennifer | 10:00 am | January 7, 2008 | suppliers, budgets, workflow

Over the past year, several newspapers have sent their page layout, copyediting, ad production and in a few cases reporting, to Indian outsourcing companies.

It will be interesting to see how having people who live in a different culture handle the design and production of print media considered a crucial voice in a local market. Will they use starbursts? How will they feel about adding snipes? These Indian workers will be fluent in English, but the question remains of their skills with typography in Western lettering.

The question of whether or not design firms and ad agencies could follow in the newspapers lead is there. Certainly creating a brochure can be more complex, but not necessarily. Many Designers could build tight comps and ship those to India to have Production Artists there create press-ready files to match.

Of course, what gets missed in this is the ability for the Designer and Production Artist to work together to solve problems. Typically the Production department inside creative industries has been one of bridging ideas and realistic expectations. Outsourcing could mean that the generic 4c work goes overseas, leaving more complex pieces for Production staffers here to do.

I don’t think this system will be the death of many jobs. Already we’re seeing fewer applicants for Production artist positions as most head over to the area on New Media. It’ll be interesing to see what happens over the next few years - if this works, or if some work comes back to western copy rooms.