Review and Approval Workflows


Repurposing of Content Workflow

In my experience with content generation, most companies I work with have content and data scattered all over the company in various forms and repositories. Often these companies have separate departments for print and web. They might outsource their email marketing and likely use outside service providers for their broadcast advertising. See Figure D.7 for potential locations where your data and content might be located.

Figure D.7. Your content data and skills could be scattered all over the company.


Consider this example: Various departments request logos and images to be repurposed from print to web to email. They are saved in various formats, color spaces, and resolutions all over the company. They are sometimes used in accordance with branding standards, but often are not. Content including product or services information, pricing, and specifications might be warehoused in engineering or manufacturing. Customer information, including various methods of contacting them, buying history, and customer service history, resides somewhere in sales or accounting.

The convergence of all this content will allow for the leveraging of that content efficiently and quickly. When marketing creates a campaign that relies on the timely release of content at specific times that leverage the results, how can you respond when all your resources are scattered all over the place in noncompliant forms? See Figure D.8 for my interpretation.

Figure D.8. The recycle symbol can apply to assets as well.


The concept of repurposing of content is nothing new to the creative. An image for the Web will need to be RGB or indexed and low resolution, whereas the same image that needs to be printed will need to be CMYK and at a resolution of twice the intended linescreen. This is a simple example of repurposing this content for different uses. Can you not apply the same logic to data, to product descriptions and specifications, and to pricing?

To step beyond the concept of repurposing a single file or image, let's look at the role of Acrobat as one of the first utilities that allowed for the repurposing of content. You can take a layout and initially send it around the company in a small, compact, low resolution form to act as a content proof. Then you can take the same layout and create a PDF to be posted on the website. Finally, you can take the same layout and create a PDF destined for a printing press. Thus, you've repurposed this content three ways for three different and distinct reasons.

PDF Workflows

In recent years, an explosion of PDF generation has occurred. You can use PDFs for the distribution of memos, for low-resolution proofs circulated via email for approval, and for slide presentations. PDFs can be distributed instead of printed catalogues on CDs with hyperlinks and bookmarks for easy navigation of product information and price lists. In addition, you can use PDFs for placing ads in publications and electronic billboards and for print production.

That's a lot of uses for PDFs and just as many opportunities for making them incorrectly. Yes, it's possible to make a bad PDF. If this file format has become a cornerstone in your workflow, are you optimizing its production? Do you have standards or procedures in place to ensure PDFs are created correctly and consistently? How about efficiently?

InDesign, as do all Adobe products, has the ability to create PDFs via the Export command. The Export command's tabs in InDesign look similar to the setting options you see in Distiller. These options are adequate for the bulk of PDFs you will need to generate. Distiller is still an option, and you will find more specific options available via Distiller for generating a PDF. Many print vendors would still prefer you generate a PDF with Distiller and will even distribute custom settings specific for your printer's workflow.

Another option you should consider is the concept of "certified" PDFs. A certified PDF is validated for a specific workflow. A common certified PDF discussed in this book is the PDF/X standard. Many products can create or validate for this standard. Enfocus has a series of products designed to expedite this process and can add this feature to virtually any application. InDesign and Distiller can create a PDF/X. Flightcheck can check to verify a PDF/X, whereas Acrobat can preflight to check a standard and validate the standard. Because many print production workflows can move this type of file quickly through their processes with little or no intervention by prepress, they can quickly produce these jobs. This is a "win-win" for both the service provider and the client. See Figure D.9 for the PDF endorsement.

Figure D.9. The green checkmark, indicating certification.


Distiller supports watched folders, a feature that attaches job settings to specific folders. Files that are dropped into these folders are automatically distilled to those specifications. The product Distiller Server allows you to set up watched folders on a server so that a workgroup can take advantage of this feature. Imagine everyone producing PDFs for specific types of output consistently. These actions can be scripted to further automate the process.

Another option for PDF generation is an online service provided by Adobe at http://createpdf.adobe.com/. This is a handy resource provided by the company that invented and defined the standards by which this versatile file format succeeds not only in graphic arts but in the general population of business and consumer creators alike.

Repurposing Content with Creative Suite, Variable Data, and XML

Let's look beyond page layout and Acrobat and turn our attention to the Creative Suite as a whole. You can start a layout in InDesign (with contributions from Illustrator and Photoshop) and Package for GoLive. You can then repurpose the content of this print layout for a web layout. Or you can take a series of images in Photoshop and create a web gallery of images. Plus, you can take the correspondence you create in MS Word and make it a form. Or you can repurpose content using the Creative Suite.

Variable Data Publishing is not limited to print, but can be used for web and email as well. It enables you to get even more from your content by creating custom, personalized pieces of marketing by using not only text and images, but customer data as well.

Imagine being able to use a customer's buying history to entice another sale. For example, say a customer receives an email indicating that a special website designed just for him is waiting at a specific website. The website contains a picture of a product or service the customer has recently purchased with a message outlining his recent purchases. Based on that history, the website states that the customer might be interested in another product, which is waiting for him. All he has to do is simply click to create an order!

Finally, the most sophisticated and strategic methodology for repurposing of content is the use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) tags for all your content. XML is a language by which you create definitions for tags that you apply to all content. These tags can then be attached to objects or frames in a layout to expedite the construction of a message. Chapter 2, "Planning for Production," reviewed the process briefly. For more information, a good starting reference book is The Visual QuickStart Guide to XML by Peachpit Press. You should also look up http://www.w3.org/XML/ for more information.



Adobe InDesign CS2 @work. Projects You Can Use on the Job
Adobe InDesign CS2 @work: Projects You Can Use on the Job
ISBN: 067232802X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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