Better Content, Better Business
Content abounds at small to large organizations alike. The challenge for St. Louis businesses is to reproduce information in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible.
Never before has the world of graphic arts been so dynamic, so ripe with change and new opportunities afforded by emerging creative technologies. And no longer are the creations made in popular desktop programs — like QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word — bound to the traditional constraints of print. These days, businesses create content for any number of purposes.
Even small-to-mid sized businesses generate a significant amount of “content” for dissemination in one form of media or another — brochures, marketing materials, advertisements, educational and training materials, presentations, Web copy, and so forth. And no matter the output intention — whether the information will be printed and distributed, or used in some electronic fashion (the Web, an Intranet, a DVD/CD-ROM, email newsletter, etc.)– it’s up to the creator of that content to ensure that it reproduces with integrity.
While the “new media” enables businesses greater opportunity for exposure and reach, it’s prompted those creating content to adapt and learn new skill sets.
David Creamer, owner of I.D.E.A.S. Training, Bonsall, CA, says that thee is a greater burden on businesses to stay on top of the rapidly evolving world of graphics arts and electronic media.
Take a simple concept like PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format), for example, While most professionals are fairly familiar with PDF as a universally embraced way to share content, the mere act of creating a PDF document is quite complicated. Depending on where and how the information is being disseminated, the PDF file must contain certain attributes to drive output. A PDF file that’s being posted on a Web site is very different from one that’s intended to be printed, for example.
Like a Microsoft Word or QuarkXPress file, Creamer asserts, “PDF is just a format. It can eliminate the problem of missing graphics or fonts, but there is still the issue of garbage in, garbage out.”
That’s why a content creator’s continuing education is so critical these days. “I’m not talking about how to design, but how to create file properly — when to use a spot-color guide, when to use a process-color guide, how much resolution is necessary, how to eliminate transparency issues, how to make PDFs, and so forth,” Creamer stresses.
“Everyone an make a PDF file on the computer simply by selecting the print-to-PDF option. It does not mean that it is a production-quality PDF” Stephen Shinnick agrees. Shinnick is the vice president of sales for All Systems Integration, an international graphic arts and printing integration firm. In his role, Shinnick consults with businesses across the globe, and suggests and implements technologies that help his clients create, manage and distrbute content is the most effective and cost-efficient way.
Fortunately, content creators don’t have to be formally trained graphic artists to prepare good files, Shinnick suggests. There are very low-cost software solutions — commonly referred to as ‘preflight’ tools — to help ensure content is rendered precisely the way you expect.
A preflight tool like Markzware’s (Santa Ana, CA) FlightCheck Professional will adjudicate a digital file — PDFs, standardized forms of PDFs, native application files from popular desktop publishing applications, you name it — and verify that the output specifications are made. For example, a document destined for print should contain only graphics and illustrations that are high-resolution (300 to 600 dpi) and made up of the blend of the four colors used by printing technologies.
That same document, should it be distributed via the Web, must adhere to very different parameters. Graphics are better rendered in low-resolution (72 to 150 dpi) and should be RGB (a blend of red, green and blue, the color space most electronic displays accommodate).
Color space and resolution are but two possible pitfalls a preflight solution will detect. An application like FlightCheck Professional will check a document for hundreds of potential output errors — save the average business thousands of dollars and countless hours spent fixing file inadequacies or reprinting flawed materials.
September 25th, 2009
[...] changing right before our very eyes and as print-shops, you are perfectly placed to be the hubs of new media output of today and tomorrow. Whether it is print on paper, output to screen or whatever [...]