InDesign Promotion within Company

[rakilmartin]

Hi everyone! Please forgive me but I have to use the dreaded Publisher name in my question...

I am in a Corporate Marketing Department where we use InDesign for everything and absolutely love it. However, we are having a hard time convincing our outlying offices to use it instead of Publisher. (the offices already have InDesign provided to them, it's not a question of price). I have been asked to give a "presentation" to the offices explaining why InDesign is so much better than Publisher and I am having a hard time putting it into words. Is there any documentation floating around anywhere about InDesign vs Publisher? Or could anyone help me with some bullet points?

Thank you!!

[The_Black_Knight]

In my experience, whenever you need something changed within a company, if it doesn't come from a Senior VP that says, "Do it this way or you'll be looking for other work," nothing can convince people to do anything differently.

[budafist]

Maybe you could bring in a few pre-press people to your presentation.

Then say "Indesign" to them and witness the smiles, nods etc.

Then say "Publisher" to them and witness the hair tearing, shudders and tears.

[PrintDriver]

For some reason (and I blame Garricks), the image of saying, "Publisher!" to a bunch of pre-press guys brings to mind the image of Igor saying, "Blucher!" to the horses in Young Frankenstein... :p

[CkretAjint]

I would rather knaw my arm off then make it swirl the mouse around in publisher!

[urstwile]

I've only heard of Publisher and have never used it. Is that a sufficient enough bullet point? :D

[The_Black_Knight]

Maybe you could bring in a few pre-press people to your presentation.

Then say "Indesign" to them and witness the smiles, nods etc.

Then say "Publisher" to them and witness the hair tearing, shudders and tears.

The problem is, this kind of person is very common in the corporate world.

They know what they know to do their jobs, and that's it. They don't care about anyone else (such as the printers). They don't care to learn anything new as long as their jobs aren't threatened. To them, learning another piece of software is just an inconvenience. I'm sure most of them feel, "I've always used Publisher. Why should I learn something else?"

And even if they are switched by force, expect to hear wailing and moaning about how hard it is to use InDesign, and how their keyboard shortcuts don't work, and how something else might not work how they're used to.

I have seen this attitude many times. I've even seen it when switching art departments over from QuarkXPress to InDesign. I can't tell you how many times I've been told, "Quark did it such and such a way. InDesign doesn't do it that way. InDesign sucks!"

I don't know how you can change that kind of attitude. I'm not sure if it can be done.

[garricks]

Publisher!

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a249/garricks/GDF/horse_rearing.jpg

:p

I've tried a couple of times to help clients with Publisher files. It was a nachtmare. The PDFs it creates just don't work right.

It doesn't export to anything Indy or Illy can open, and if I'm not mistaken, works in RGB color space, not CMYK. So when you go to press there are bound to be colors out of gamut.

TBK, we had wailing and gnashing of teeths when we switched from Quark (and one PageMaker holdout) to Indy. Now none of them would go back.

[emucru]

InDesign - Industry Standard
Publisher - Free with computer for home users.

I once worked with a customer that only used Publisher to layout a community magazine. It printed mediocre 60% of the time after I set up custom swatches for separation, installed drivers on their computer, made prn files, distilled, many errors later we had a somewhat usuable PDF. I dreaded that one on a monthly basis.

[Broacher]

Realistically, I wouldn't be so quick to promote ID as a replacement for Publisher by your non-designer colleagues.

1> A little, no... make that a VERY little knowledge can be a very, very bad thing. ID has SO much more horsepower under it's hood, and absolute publishing power corrupts publications files absolutely.

2> The more people at work who use the same tools as you do, the more your skills become devalued -- maybe not so much to the people who are struggling to develop skills in the same tools (they generally GAIN respect for your experience), but certainly to the people who do the overseeing and headcounting who have even less of a clue to what you actually do.

And in that group, there seems to be many fervent believers in the mantra that what separates non-professional designers from pros is just the software and a little time. It doesn't make any real long-term sense, but people in management often work on quicker, non-rational 'instincts' which includes the fallacy that connects the size and quality of a worker's skill with the size and quality of their toolboxes.

If you don't believe me, check out how many ex-secretaries/assistants are now working in many mid-sized companies as their 'designers' after having taken a night course or two.

As for why ID is such a tough sell to the MS Office faithful? For many users (and that covers 90% or more of the execs), Office (and it's kin: Publisher) are the ONLY graphic design interfaces that they have at least SOME working experience with. It's asking a tremendous amount from them (in time, frustration stress, and ultimately money) to learn a new way of working out a layout.

Can you imagine if Adobe included a 'Publisher' friendly UI for their products? Everything would take ten times as long to create, but I bet it would sell like hotcakes. Oops.

Ssssh! I didnt' say that.

[Lithonate]

InDesign - Industry Standard
Publisher - Free with computer for home users.

I once worked with a customer that only used Publisher to layout a community magazine. It printed mediocre 60% of the time after I set up custom swatches for separation, installed drivers on their computer, made prn files, distilled, many errors later we had a somewhat usuable PDF. I dreaded that one on a monthly basis.

I spent last week (at least a couple of hours a day and one entire day) trying to get a supplied publisher file to create a pdf that I could use. Friggin nightmare. Finally after i was about to slam my nuts in a door to relieve the pain I got a semi-usable file out of it. Sounds like I may be lucky though, i think its only a quarterly.:eek:

[jimking]

I spent last week (at least a couple of hours a day and one entire day) trying to get a supplied publisher file to create a pdf that I could use. Friggin nightmare. Finally after i was about to slam my nuts in a door to relieve the pain I got a semi-usable file out of it. Sounds like I may be lucky though, i think its only a quarterly.:eek:
With all your wasted hours and sore nuts, purchase Pitstop and your nuts will feel better and the Pub file can be fixed in minutes! :D
http://www.enfocus.com/select_region.php

[Lithonate]

I have pitstop, though I am an admitted novice with it. The problem was the pictures in the pdf were coming across divided into sections (does that make sense?) I did quite a bit of trying with pitstop to fix it but couldn't figure it out. Any suggestions?

[jimking]

I've seen that before. Were they divided in the pdf or pub file or both? Where they thin white lines running vertical in the image?

[Lithonate]

PDF only. They were thin white kind of wedge shaped lines running horizontally. Only on a couple of the pics.

[jimking]

I believe this happens coming out of word or Pub or both. The way I fixed it the last time was that I opened those graphics in Photoshop using Acrobat's "Touch up object tool" and either selected parts of the graphic and bumped it over to fill the white line and cloning and then saved over the pic in the pdf. If its vector then open Illy through Acrobat and just move the segments to fit. It is annoying as hell.

[urstwile]

The problem is, this kind of person is very common in the corporate world.

They know what they know to do their jobs, and that's it. They don't care about anyone else (such as the printers). They don't care to learn anything new as long as their jobs aren't threatened. To them, learning another piece of software is just an inconvenience. I'm sure most of them feel, "I've always used Publisher. Why should I learn something else?"

And even if they are switched by force, expect to hear wailing and moaning about how hard it is to use InDesign, and how their keyboard shortcuts don't work, and how something else might not work how they're used to.

I have seen this attitude many times. I've even seen it when switching art departments over from QuarkXPress to InDesign. I can't tell you how many times I've been told, "Quark did it such and such a way. InDesign doesn't do it that way. InDesign sucks!"

I don't know how you can change that kind of attitude. I'm not sure if it can be done.

I have to agree with you on that one. One of my co-workers is still using Quark Xpress shortcuts for InDesign, which none of us do anymore (actually, we never did, except for her). She's been very resistant to getting even halfway decent with the program.

[Eggles1]

However, we are having a hard time convincing our outlying offices to use it instead of Publisher.

My first question is WHY do you want your outlying offices to use ID?

Is it because (a) they send you files you have to work on?

(b) they get them printed offset?

Because if the answer to both is No, then why are you worrying about it?

One of the admin girls in our office (where I am the solo inhouse GD) does a quarterly newsletter in Publisher, which is printed inhouse. It looks terrible but I have never commented on it, as she thinks she does an OK job. And presumably the powers that be have never expected anything more professional. But she hasn't the first clue about design or layout or typography or photos. I shudder to think how she would cope with ID. She wouldn't. And why should she?

I happened to walk past as she was working on it the other day (it takes her 3 days to do a 12 page newsletter) and gently suggested she needed to give more white space around the images she inserts into the text. When she checked the settings (and I assume these were the default ones) there was 0.1mm (which my online converter said was equal to 0"). Yes the text is jammed up hard against the left and right sides of each photo. There is a little air at the top and bottom simply because her paragraph settings have 1.5 line spacing. She made the change, acknowledged that it sort of looked better but said she wasn't going to change it as she had started on the latest newsletter and she didn't want to change what she'd already done.

At that point, I left her to it.

[budafist]

When I get a publisher file from a client I always forward it onto one of our sales guys that has publisher to pdf.

Then I have to fix the pdf in Pitstop so that it works.