From the Design Weblog mailbag:
We have thought for some time about checking out InDesign, especially now with the Positive reviews it is getting
vs. Quark. However, is it still true that it is far from becoming an industry standard and many printers still havent
jumped on the bandwagon?
TG
From the Magazine Design Weblog mailbag:
I'm the production manager for a middle-sized magazine. We're not Forbes, but we're nothing to sneeze at. We want to convert our workflow from Quark (4.1 on Mac 9) to InDesign. [Name omitted by editor], our provider and press, will not take InDesign files. We don't want to have to shop for a new provider. [This one] gives us a good rate, but they are using that rate to force us to remain with Quark.
Any advice?
JW
I get letters like this frequently?at least two or three per week. I usually answer privately, as I did in the above two cases, but I also wanted to discuss the matter publicly.
Design and production go together like peanut butter and jelly, Fred and Wilma, Bruce and Demi and
Ashton. It's a partnership?a business partnership meant to service the needs of both and enable both to grow and
prosper. However, when one of those partners is impeding the progress and growth of the other, then the partnership is
no longer mutually beneficial. Instead it becomes one-sided.
I talk to many people about Quark and InDesign, which is right for their respective workflows, what they want to accomplish in the layout/DTP space, and where they forecast their needs and creative decisions in the next few years. In some cases either the client or I feel Quark or a Quark-based workflow best fits the client. Framemaker is, once in a while, the best choice. Overwhelmingly, though, InDesign and an InDesign-based workflow answers the client's needs more than any other?especially when the client asks herself the question about her needs and creative directions a year or two down the road.
In most cases, the client/acquaintance/passerby comes to me already possessing a strong desire to switch to InDesign. The reasons are many?and I won't list them here?but the cited obstacles to that switch are always the same short list. Though cost of software and retraining are invariably on the list, the number one obstacle faced by would-be InDesigners is push-back from print service providers.
Incidentally, the objection about cost of software and retraining is almost always far less than anticipated. At $699 USD, InDesign costs less than a new $945 USD copy of Quark, and it has an interface instantly familiar and productive to anyone with even a novice's knowledge of Photoshop or Illustrator.
InDesign is taking over as the leading publishing platform quickly and steadily. Printers and service bureaus are resisting as they usually do (see this link for more on the reasons of that). They won't adopt InDesign or any new workflow technology that doesn't directly cut their costs or increase their output until designers force them. That's the way it has always been.
Service bureaus didn't embrace the Desktop Publishing Revolution with PostScript, desktop typesetting and layout, soft fonts, and digital artwork in the mid-Eighties. They fought tooth-and-nail against it. When PageMaker became the standard publishing platform, the production side pushed back hard, refusing to take PageMaker or digital files at all. Eventually they begrudgingly took PostScript files, then, in direct reaction to the frequent job-stopper problems they would get in PS files, adopted PageMaker so they could fix problems themselves onsite with less impact to their workflow than sending the job back to the creative pro and talking him through the repair.
If you bring a fair amount of business to your service providers, they must adapt (within reason) to you. For the record: Switching your workflow away from an antiquated, limited, often highly problematic layout application like Quark over to a proven publishing platform like InDesign, then wanting your providers to support and become compatible with your choice, is certainly a reasonable adaptation to demand. When you're ready to switch to InDesign, go to your service providers and tell?don't ask?them that you'll be switching. At that point they have three choices: Get InDesign installed, take only PDFs, or lose your business to a competitor.
Most service providers operate on a fairly tight margin, and every client counts. Their first step, as usual, will be to go for the minimal impact compromise. They'll agree to take PDFs from designers?they should all already be taking PDFs; there's no good reason why a service provider shouldn't take spec-compliant PDFs in today's market. Ultimately it will prove more cost effective for the provider to have a copy of InDesign installed and train one person to use it, at least as far as using it to troubleshoot and fix client jobs. Then the one person will beget two, who will beget four, and so on.
Just like every other advancement to creative technology over the last twenty years, the switch to InDesign must be driven by the creative side of the creative-production partnership.
This is exactly how it happened twelve years ago when designers forced the service providers to adopt Quark over PageMaker. They didn't make the change willingly or without dragging their feet and clawing backward for every inch creative pros dragged them.
Service providers will adapt to InDesign. They don't have a choice. No matter how much they bitch and bluster, just like they did twenty years ago about PostScript and DTP, just like they did twelve years ago about Quark, they will begrudgingly adopt InDesign. How soon they do is up to designers, not the service providers.
Don't wait for them to come around; make the choice that's right for your creative workflow. If that choice is InDesign, then switch. Let the service providers decide between your business and their reluctance.
Many service providers are seeing the light and adopting InDesign?some even before their clients demand it. Others are adapting, but working with their designers through the transition. Give your service provider a chance to get his own house in order while you do yours; keep in mind it might take him a little longer since production is not streamlined for adaptation. When you tell your provider you're switching to InDesign, be patient if he asks for a transitional period. If the provider says he'll adapt, but that he needs a couple of months to purchase, test, install, and train, give him the time. Offer to send a couple of test jobs to him to work out the kinks in his workflow. As a gesture of goodwill, offer to buy him the first copy of InDesign. Remember the partnership of creative and production; if production will adapt with a transitional period, be a good partner and allow for?in fact, assist in?that transition.
If your partner says no, though, don't stand for it.
If you're a service provider on the press and/or pre-press side who has already adapted to InDesign, here's your chance for a free plug. Leave a comment. Add your URL (and telephone number, if you like) along with an affirmation that you take native InDesign files for output to press or film.
1. I use Photoshop for bitmap images, easily intergrated with InDesign. I use Illustrator for vector images, also a slick intergration. I use InDesign for layout. All the above can export to PDF. InDesign imports PDFs visually accurately. When a job is ready for the DTP or outsourcing, EVERYTHING goes to PDF. There is no excuse that ALL of the printers have to get with the technology of today. PDF will let you embed EVERYTHING. The investment will pay off in the production time of the files that you will save. The more job able to go to press in a day, the more jobs can be printed, inhouse or outhouse, and the more printing you can sell, shorter turn around time. Next, I use Acrobat 5.0 with Pitstop and Quite Imposing. You can always rasterize your PDF with Photoshop for outhouse, if they don't take PDFs which they should. Or, you can export as an EPS with fonts embedded, if your RIP does not take PDFs. There is SuperTrap to provided for trapping. All the Adobe applications can be purchased for a reduced price by becoming a Adobe Service Provider. The future of printing is not the PDF, the PDF is TODAY.
Posted at 6:10AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Guest