In all teamwork, deadlines pressure those at the end of the production line. When it comes to creating a publication that is graphically rich (a newspaper, a magazine, an answer to a bid for proposals…), those in the graphic studio are rushed to make the final adjustments before delivering the files to the printer. In some cases, the modifications are even made at the printer’s, but that’s a completely different matter.

Finishing on time and being able to get home on time usually becomes a dream!

With a collaborative production platform like Simple Workspace, your dream will come true.

Preparing bid requests

For instance, a J2S client produces its bid reequests with the market leading layout tool, InDesign.
Fluidifying collaboration between experts who master the content and the graphic designers in load of the layout is an essential issue. The implementation of a production platform such as Simple Workspace, one of the aspects of which is to structure exchanges, is becoming a necessity.

One shared truth

First of all, the platform allows documents to be centralized in a single space for presentation to all authorized stakeholders. The goal is to ensure that all participants work in real time on the “truth” version of the publication, avoiding the dispersion and multiplication of files that are always a source of error.

Generally, it is organized in subparts, each one presented as page thumbnails in a flat-plan [1] accessible online. Such an organization makes it possible, to manage access according to the rights and roles of users, as an example, for extremely sensitive cases where confidentiality constraints are extremely sensitive.

Assigning tasks

Work can then be dispatched according to a more or less complex workflow that seeks to align tasks as much as possible according to each person’s responsibilities. While the graphic aspects of formatting remain the responsibility of the studio, the market managers and product managers are in charge of the content and have an “author / editor / proofreader” role.

The platform thus structures exchanges to speed up page validation. The “editors” can immediately revise the layout pages made available to them by the studio. The tools allow to :

• Launch discussion threads on specific points on a page prepared by the studio.
• Add pages from a referential of ” template sheets ” available in the platform.
• Directly make author corrections online, thus avoiding the studio to retype with the risk of error that this may cause.
• Validate the content of the pages before sending them back to the studio for the finalization work (settings of interactive elements, PDF output …).
• Restore a previous version of the page.

The flatplan in Simple Workspace

On-line corrections in Simple Workspace

Meeting deadlines with confidence.

Time savings also come from the fact that people need to know clearly what they have to do and by when. This is the advantage of the Dashboard, which scans all projects, taking into account the rights of each user, to allow quick and direct access to work in progress.

In conclusion, in the context of producing graphically rich documents, it is important to work on reducing as much as possible the non-value-added tasks of the proofreading cycle.

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Now, if you are interested in making your co-workers’ tasks more convenient and helping them to finish on time, contact us and let’s see how our expertise associated with Simple Workspace can help you!

Richard Loubéjac,
Co-founder of J2S