FlightCheck Professional v6.5 – Customer Workflow & Testimonial

“FlightCheck is our safe-guard. Through its customizable ground controls we are able to flag potential problems with all placed elements before they get to the final QC process. I would recommend FlightCheck to others. A company’s digital assets in the world of print are its most important. FlightCheck confirms and guards the integrity of files and ensures that there will be no printability concerns in the final product.”
Shawn Vazinski, Production Manager
Lachina Publishing Services

From: Shawn Vazinski <xxxxx@lachina.com>
Date: March 8, 2010 10:44:55 PM
To: Mary Gay <pr@markzware.com>
Subject: Re: Markzware/FlightCheck

1. So, tell us a little about yourself.  Please provide your company name and location along with your professional title .
As Production Manager for Lachina Publishing Services in Cleveland, Ohio, my duties range on a daily basis, from making assignments, balancing workflow, managing technology initiatives, enhancing productivity through better software practices or trying new things, and talking with the staff about any issues they are facing technologically or otherwise.

2.  How did you get started in this industry
I started in the graphic-design industry first as a print design art director, but really started into publishing as a production manager working on periodicals.  Read more... (845 words, 9 images, estimated 3:23 mins reading time)

Here was a quote from a well know figure in our graphic arts sector which I thought was awesome. It also happens to say what preflighting in the creative process is all about, although this can apply to any level of quality assurance within the design workflow:

“If you don’t have time to do it right,
when will you have time to do it over?”

Terry White
http://terrywhite.com/tw/Welcome.html

Apart from being a columnist for Layers Magazine and X-OLOGY Magazine Terry is also Worldwide Adobe Creative Suite Design Evangelist.

A lot of anniversaries this year. Last week we got reminded of InDesign’s presence on our computers for 10 years! Before this, we saw that Adobe Photoshop has been with us 20 years. Earlier this year, we posted about how Desktop Publishing and its subsequent revolutionary effects on print communication turns twenty-five in two-thousand-and-ten (DTP Turns 20) and now we learn this:

Dot-com marks 25th anniversary

(CNN) “It was 25 years ago — March 15, 1985 — that the first dot-com domain name — Symbolics.com — appeared on the Internet, ushering in the commercial age of the World Wide Web.”

It is also the 10th anniversary of the dot-com-bubble bursting. There is a lot of convergence this year, which is very interesting (Let’s call that content convergence) . What is wild, is the fact that ALL of these products, services or events sharing these anniversaries are inter-connected.

Wow, what a year! There is at least one other anniversary this year… any guess which product that is for?

In modo semplice e straordinario consente di cercare ed estrapolare contenuti dai documenti Adobe InDesign,  Microsoft Publisher e QuarkXPress

SANTA ANA, California 11 Marzo 2010 — Markzware continua a re-inventarsi, ampliando la sua offerta all’ambito “contenuti”. Rilasciata la nuova versione di PageZephyr.
PageZephyr 2.0 consente ad editori, agenzie di pubblicità, attività legali o a qualsiasi altra azienda che deve gestire file in formato proprietario di consultare e riutilizzare quei contenuti un tempo inaccessibili.

PageZephyr 2.0 consulta, estrae, indicizza e converte i testi contenuti nei documenti creati in formato proprietario e in formati meno comuni senza dover aprire il file con l’applicazione nativa. Questa tecnologia riduce il tempo perso a consultare e catalogare i contenuti celati all’interno di questi file (posti sia su dischi locali che su server). Prima dell’arrivo di PageZephyr i documenti dovevano essere aperti tramite applicazione originale e i contenuti ricercati manualmente file per file. Ora, grazie a PageZephyr 2.0, chiunque può trovare i contenuti all’interno di questi documenti semplicemente inserendo una parola o frase nel campo di ricerca.  Read more... (540 words, 7 images, estimated 2:10 mins reading time)

Read over on PrintWeek an interesting development in the area of “preflighting,” which will be shown in May at IPEX 2010 in the UK. Interesting, for we have been saying for years just demanding a PDF file in a certain flavor does not work:

Enfocus unveils PitStop Connect pre-flighting tool

Barney Cox, printweek.com, 09 March 2010
Enfocus has launched PitStop Connect – a software tool that printers can supply to clients to ensure files are produced to their specification so that there are “no more headaches” for creatives.
Source: http://www.printweek.com/PreMediaWeekly

The reason it is even more interesting, is for the fact that preflighting does not start with checking a PDF!  No, it starts with checking native artwork and Quark, InDesign or Illustrator layouts. That is what FlightCheck Professional and it’s exportable Ground Controls or preflight profiles offer. The ability to share what to check for, BEFORE a PDF is created. The fact that just jamming a PDF spec down the throats of the designers has not worked, as you’ll read in the article, also does not surprise me, for we have been seeing and saying that all along! We read in part:  Read more... (503 words, 11 images, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Here was a great one we picked up on over at Posterous and their fine assortment of designer orientated blogs. This inspiring video is titled, “The making of a book cover [time-lapse video]” and was posted by AllTop a Guy Kawasaki venture, among ventures. Too bad many graphic designers push preflighting their Illustrations and InDesign layouts to the next party, as in the print-shop. I wouldn’t trust anyone to mess with this after that design was exported… Amazing work here:

First we realized Desktop Publishing itself turns 25 this year, then it was Photoshop that also turns 20 in 2010 and now this:

Adobe InDesign 10 Years on the Creative Desktop!

http://www.indesign10anniversary.com/

Need to preflight or convert to or from Adobe InDesign, then Markzware is your source to free your content. Adobe InDesign Plug-ins and world-class applications that have been with InDesign and DTP every step of the way… Markzware.

Happy birthday InDesign!

For the recent Amsterdam InDesign User Group meeting, Markzware was going to donate a Q2ID (QuarkXPress to Adobe InDesign conversion Plug-in), but that would be too logical. So this time we got Gabriel Powell, Chairman of the Netherlands InDesign User Group,  a FlightCheck Professional v6.5, which can preflight 50+ file formats, as a stand-alone preflight and packaging tool, including Adobe Illustrator, PDF and of course InDesign. And the winner was… drum-roll please:

Peter van der Zon
Mediacollege Amsterdam
docent GV
(graphic arts teacher)

To learn more about what they discussed at that meeting and for future events about Adobe InDesign in Holland, see:
http://www.indesignusergroup.com/chapters/amsterdam/

They also offer a very informative and handy publication for their Dutch members:

“Het nIDug Magazine is het eerste digitale magazine dat gewijd is aan InDesign en de bloeiende gemeenschap van InDesign professionals in Nederland.”

InDesign Dutch Forum:

http://www.indesignusergroup.nl/forum/punbb/

We all know what most say is the worlds oldest profession, but I start to wonder if we are not part of what amounts to mankind’s oldest trade – the art of graphic representation!

We read in an interesting New Scientist article titled, “Oldest ‘writing’ found on 60,000-year-old eggshells,” this sniplet:

“COULD these lines etched into 60,000-year-old ostrich eggshells (see photo) be the earliest signs of humans using graphic art to communicate?”
Source: New Scientist

Looks like they tried to use a grid layout to help their typography, but surely not with Adobe InDesign CS4 or similar. Also, being Friday and all, could not resist inserting this cartoon image of a “graphic novel” by a caveman as well:

Source: http://media.photobucket.com/image/graphic%20arts,%20caveman/BECPL/caveman-1.jpg

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