Digital Asset Management
Jennifer | 3:38 pm | January 21, 2008 | budgets, ads, prepress, process, workflow, planning, plan, General
All of your electronic artwork - support files, final ads, standards manuals, etc…. Are digital assets. It can be difficult to keep your files organised and even more difficult to ensure your suppliers and clients have access to them. There are online sites that make this simpler.
If you need to have offsite backup (that is, you need your files to survive your office burning down) you can use simple storage facilities such as X-drive. If you want a more robust solution that allow not just file management, but full search facilities and the ability to have clients work off your files, there are wide-ranging sites such as Corbis’ Media Management service, which supplies the option of fully automatic file storage, archiving and retrieval.
Guess which service is more expensive.
There are a number of solutions available to you. As always, they’re only worth as much as you’re willing to work with them. It’s still up to you to ensure everything is kept up to date and proper search terms (if applicable) are generated for each shot. If your supplier is going to allow clients to customize art based on templates you’ve uploaded, test those applications over and over. Find the least tech-savvy person you know and have them go through the steps. You need to be sure it’ll work for everyone. Otherwise it’ll end up being an exercise in frustration for you and your clients.
More vocabulary
Jennifer | 10:19 am | January 11, 2008 | prepress, terminology, printing, process, workflow, General
Production works in acronyms, here are some you might come across:
- FSI - Free Standing Insert.
Those annoying flyers you get with your paper are referred to as FSIs. - GSM - Graphic Standards Manual.
This is the visual bible for your brand. Logo and tagline usage guidelines. - PMS - Pantone Matching System.
Pantone colours are specific ink mixes that create a colour standard. - CMYK - Process colour. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
This is the most common colour printing. These 4 colours are combined to create all the colours you see in printed pieces. - RGB - Digital colour. Your monitor uses it - Red, Green, Blue.
This colour profile is often used for digital and new media work. - PSD - Photoshop file.
PSD files are photographic files created by photoshop. They are commonly used in press-ready file creation. - EPS - Encapsulated postscript, used for images.
EPS files can be vector art or photographic images, they are another common format found in press-ready files.
Other terms and phrases you might hear thrown around include…
Working files. When someone requests working files, they are asking for the files used to generate the graphics. This means fonts, images as separate files that are linked to the page layout file. Working files are necessary if adjustments might need to be made. For example, you would send your printer working files if there was concern that some photos might need to have adjustments made.
PDF/X1-a. PDF files can take many forms, they can be small files meant only to be used on screen, or highly specific files made to run on presses. The PDF-X series are common formats used in printing, and PDF/X1-a is usually the file type requested by most magazines.
I’ll keep posting more as I think of them. After awhile all these terms become a part of everyday language, it gets difficult to remember what isn’t common knowledge!
Spec’ing the project
Jennifer | 10:07 am | December 18, 2007 | budgets, terminology, process, workflow, plan, planning
When beginning a job, the best defence against cost overruns is to properly spec the job. To create specifications is to define the limits of what you’ll do for the price you charge. All too often I see vague specifications lead to misunderstandings between creative and client. Properly detailing the job will help prevent this.
Specifications on a job should note the following:
- What pieces you’ll do
- What the client will supply
- What rights the client is purchasing
- How large each piece will be (number of pages, size)
- How many versions there will be of each piece (i.e. names on business cards)
- What type of final art will be supplied
- Who is responsible for purchasing fonts, illustrations and photos used in the pieces
- Delivery dates
- Budgets
Keeping to the specification is important when developing a job, especially with a new client. Go with the motto that no detail is too small and this should protect you from a client demanding more than what you expected.
Learning to say “No.”….or at least, “I don’t know.”
Jennifer | 9:46 am | December 13, 2007 | process, suppliers, workflow, plan, planning, General
One of the hardest parts of managing any ad campaign is managing expectations. Unrealistic ideas of how long a job takes are a common reason for jobs going wrong. It is really important to have a realistic view of the length of time needed for a job.
The best defense against broken promises is to not make any before checking in with your team. Don’t make promises on behalf of suppliers or other departments; you don’t know their workload or capabilities. This goes double if you don’t have the technical background needed to truly understand the job.
A good example is in photo retouching. Many assume that this is a quick and simple process, when it’s one of the most time-consuming parts of a job. If you’re working with a large file (ie, outdoor signage) the size of the file ensures that even the simplest changes will take a long time. Complex changes, such as retouching portraits, will take a very long time to ensure that they’re realistic.
Another big area of confusing is finishing. Once a job is printing there can be special folds, die-cuts, foil stamping, etc…. This might be done by a machine or it could be an assembly line, but until you get your timing from your supplier do not assume it’ll be a quick turnaround.
Don’t promise your client a delivery date before you check your timing. Clients would much rather you get back to them with a well thought out plan, rather than quickly agree to their delivery date, only to have to change it on them later. The former gives the impression that you’re putting in thought and effort, the latter looks amateurish and disorganised.
Protect yourself and your client; put in the time to generate a proper, realistic plan.
Usage & Copyright. A quick primer.
Jennifer | 9:37 am | December 10, 2007 | copyright, suppliers, process, General
With the advent of royalty-free photo sites everywhere, it’s tempting to think that purchasing a photo or illustration is like buying a piece of equipment. It isn’t. When you purchase photos, illustrations or fonts, you’re actually buying the right to use them in your work.
Many illustrators and photographers refuse to hand over copyright and that’s ok, you don’t need it. What you want to buy is an exclusive, unlimited usage license. The reason for the distinction is that if you own the copyright then the photographer or illustrator is legally unable to create copies of the work for use in their own portfolios or on their own websites. Paying for a “full buyout” or the exclusive, unlimited use means that no other company can use the image, and your company can use the image anywhere, anytime, in perpetuity.
If you don’t have the money or need for the full buyout, you can purchase a smaller license. You can buy usage for one year, or a small geographic area. Generally, if it’s a photoshoot you’ve arranged, there’s no point in the reduced license as the cost of the shoot will include the full buyout license for a nominal fee. However, if you’ve found the image on a website and want it for your work, take a look at how you wish to use it and negotiate with the photographer based on that usage.
Once you have the high res illustration or image, make sure you track usage! If you have not purchased a full buyout and your rights are limited you need to be sure that you don’t illegally reproduce the image. If that happens, contact the photographer or illustrator right away, and they’ll negotiate a reasonable re-use fee (normally a 50% discount is applied for all uses after the first) with you.
If you use images without a license, you’re opening your company up to fines that could be well in excess of what you might have paid through a license. The internet has allowed photographers, designers and illustrators to police their work, so don’t try to save money by using images without compensation.
I should bring up a special note with regards to fonts. Like images, you buy usage rights, not the font outright. There are many free font sites out there, make sure you look at the fontographer’s notes. Many fontographers do not grant free use for commercial interests. If you’re using it in your advertising, you’ll need to get the ok from the originator of the font.
Project management with Google calendar
Jennifer | 6:22 pm | September 18, 2007 | process, workflow, plan, planning, General
Using Google Calendar is a great way to keep track of projects if you’re just managing a small amount, and need to share information with your team. All you need to do is create an iGoogle account and you can generate calendars to track all of your projects. You invite people to view and comment on calendars, send emails to remind them of deadlines and you can access it from any computer with internet access. Multiple calendars can be created, and you control who sees which calendars. It’s a good free planning tool for anyone working on a team! To see it in action, go to Google and look at the calendars that people have made public.
Timing: planning is key.
Jennifer | 9:49 pm | September 17, 2007 | process, workflow, money, plan, planning
Campaigns can get complex. But it’s easy to keep track of it all if you can follow the general flow of the job.
Reverse Engineering: plan back from your deadline
The best way to get a campaign out the door is to begin planning as soon as you can. This is a very simple breakdown of the stages of the job:
* Scope and budget for the project is laid out. Date needed is also set.
* A creative brief is sent to the creative and production teams to start work. {This brief is used by production to negotiate with suppliers and set creative limits.}
* Suppliers are contacted about everything from design to printing.
* Creative is completed and job is made ready for the printer.
It gets a lot more detailed than what I’ve laid out, but that should give you a rough idea.
The best way to make sure you have a realistic deadline is to look at your deadline and work backwards. A great way to do this is to create what is known as a Workback or Critical Path This workback should be given to all team members. This is their opportunity to let you know if they don’t feel they can stick to the workback deadlines.
A workback is a handy tool for discovering where bottlenecks might occur. If you are working on a group of collateral pieces for a trade show, you may discover that the designer would need to supply 6 designs in 2 days. That probably won’t happen, so now is the time to move things around.
A workback also has the advantage of giving you an opportunity to buy yourself time before the job begins. For example, your printer has told you he needs 4 working days to complete the job. You allow 5 days on your workback. This now means that should something go wrong (and it often does) you have given yourself some time to fix it.
Managing the Job
With or without a workback, you’ll still find plenty of people miss their deadlines. The best way to avoid big problems is to ensure that small delays don’t start backing things up. Watch the amount of time that is getting eaten up and put a stop to delays and missed deadlines before you run out of time.
If you think you are getting into trouble, you need to flag it to everyone involved and either get it back on track right away, or begin to discuss new delivery dates. Sometimes telling people the job will deliver late is a good way to get them to pay attention.