PostScript Quark Vs. InDesign Workflow Issues

Transparency Preflight Collaboration

Collaboration Between Editorial and Creative Cohorts

Through Adobe InDesign & Microsoft Word

Often, publishing workflows are unnecessarily twisted to accomodate the collaboration between cohorts. The fear of driving someone into unfamiliar territory often motivates managers to lay the onus on Creative staff. That's why I often see Graphic Designers like House Painters: after the Carpenter and Electrician get through with construction, it is always left to the Painter to cover up their errors and shortcuts. Likewise, the Graphic Designer must make changes so that the copywriter needn't be concerned with paragraph or character styles. This needn't be the case, however. Adobe InDesign is flexible enough to make accomodate most every collaborative style.

Small Shop: 1 Editor, 1 Graphic Artist,
1 or 2 Periodicals

A small amount of training can go a very long way in this circumstance. Why bite your tongue when your writer still believes that a pragraph break should be made by running tabs across the page? Who benefits by running search-and-replace macros to get rid of serial spaces or paragraph breaks? Take time to discuss these pecadillos, and come to a mutually beneficial agreement.

When working with Microsoft Word in a small shop, the Graphic Designer should still bear the responsibility of building a clean file that writers and others can use. Here is how:

1. Once you have finished a layout or template, export the document as a Rich Text document (.rtf). You do this by clicking into a story and going to File—Export...
2. Open the Rich Text Document in Microsoft Word. Open the "Styles & Formatting" pallet and review all the style in use. Check them to make sure that paragraph spacing, font usage. etc. is uniform, and that there are no local over-rides. Delete all text and save the Rich Text document as a Microsoft Word Template (.dot).
3. Make the template available to all cohorts to develop new documents that use the InDesign styles. Familiarize them with the "Styles & Formatting" pallet. Make sure that each cohort understands that every bit of text needs to have a style.
4. When placing a new Word file into InDesign, make sure to check the "Show Import Options" button in the dialog box. Then map each Word style to its corresponding InDesign style by clicking the bottom button (Customize Style Import).

Medium Shop: 1 or 2 Designers, 2 or more Editors, 2 or more periodicals