Patrick Shannon
06-02-2005, 09:41 PM
Strap in, kids! It's time for the next edition of "You too, can be a graphic designer in minutes!," the fun thread that reminds all of you why you can't get a decent design position that pays more than ten dollars and hour and why you have to give handjobs to old men with turrets in order to pay rent!
And today I have not only one call, but two...count em, two! Back to back, both from today! Yay! Here it comes kids, hold on to your hats.....
My first call comes from a dingbat who brought in his previously designed menu (nicely designed, actually) from elsewhere, and oh yes, no digital files save a JPEG logo. So I gotta recreate it. But then I get a call from the guy this afternoon....wanting to know if I could create a file that he could edit himself on his PC whenever he wanted to print out copies for something. Usually I would tell them flat out "no" at any other place, but since I could care less if this business is robbed of work, I humor them. And the conversation went something like this....
Me: "No, I can't do that unless you have InDesign CS."
Him: "So if I buy this InDesign, then I can edit it?"
Me: "Yes, but there's another problem. I am working on a Macintosh, and therefor, my fonts will not work on the PC format."
Him: "So all I have to do is buy a Macintosh and InDesign, right?"
Me (thinking): "(Exactly how much money are you willing to blow?)"
And our second story comes just under an hour later from one of our customers looking to upgrade from Publisher. I immediately knew what direction this call was going to take when mein fuhrer's son told me to take the call and asked me "Is InDesign easy to learn?"
Their jobs would consist of four color work, which is what we send out for since we can't do four color stuff. But there are bigger problems, they want to be compatible with us and we're out of date. So I decided "So you wanna be a graphic designer, honey?" and decided to treat her as if she was another designer and break out the big, confusing language.
Her: "So I tried to buy Pagemaker and it wasn't available. So I should use InDesign?"
Me: "Yeah, Pagemaker was discontinued by Adobe, so InDesign in their program now. But there's one problem."
Her: "What?"
Me: "We're terribly out of date (NOTE: I said this VERY audibly in front of the employers). Now the current version of InDesign is InDesign CS2. But InDesign CS2 cannot save down to InDesign 2, which is what we have. Therefor, you'd have to make a PDF."
Her: (uneasy) "Uh...huh...."
Me: "But keep in mind that I cannot edit a PDF, so it's up to you to make sure that you've designed your document with the appropriate color system. In other words, don't use CMYK images when you're printing spot, and don't use spot if you're printing CMYK. Then there's RGB, which is not the same as CMYK or Spot. And make sure the DPI of your images is at least 300. If your PDF has a problem, there could be additional time and cost in getting the file printed."
Her: "O-kay...so, it will cost the same to get these InDesign documents printed as my Publisher ones?"
Me: "Um...yeah, sure."
Let em part with their money for these programs and learn the hard way, I say. My predecessor was sent by mein fuhrer years ago to train a customer how to use Corel Draw, and they completely gave up on it within hours. A few months ago, a customer bought Adobe Acrobat so they could edit their PDFs of their price catalogs (despite my HEAVY, HEAVY warnings that the Touch-up text tool was not the same as a text editor), and surprise, surprise, the client has requested that I make changes to the catalog on my end.
And today I have not only one call, but two...count em, two! Back to back, both from today! Yay! Here it comes kids, hold on to your hats.....
My first call comes from a dingbat who brought in his previously designed menu (nicely designed, actually) from elsewhere, and oh yes, no digital files save a JPEG logo. So I gotta recreate it. But then I get a call from the guy this afternoon....wanting to know if I could create a file that he could edit himself on his PC whenever he wanted to print out copies for something. Usually I would tell them flat out "no" at any other place, but since I could care less if this business is robbed of work, I humor them. And the conversation went something like this....
Me: "No, I can't do that unless you have InDesign CS."
Him: "So if I buy this InDesign, then I can edit it?"
Me: "Yes, but there's another problem. I am working on a Macintosh, and therefor, my fonts will not work on the PC format."
Him: "So all I have to do is buy a Macintosh and InDesign, right?"
Me (thinking): "(Exactly how much money are you willing to blow?)"
And our second story comes just under an hour later from one of our customers looking to upgrade from Publisher. I immediately knew what direction this call was going to take when mein fuhrer's son told me to take the call and asked me "Is InDesign easy to learn?"
Their jobs would consist of four color work, which is what we send out for since we can't do four color stuff. But there are bigger problems, they want to be compatible with us and we're out of date. So I decided "So you wanna be a graphic designer, honey?" and decided to treat her as if she was another designer and break out the big, confusing language.
Her: "So I tried to buy Pagemaker and it wasn't available. So I should use InDesign?"
Me: "Yeah, Pagemaker was discontinued by Adobe, so InDesign in their program now. But there's one problem."
Her: "What?"
Me: "We're terribly out of date (NOTE: I said this VERY audibly in front of the employers). Now the current version of InDesign is InDesign CS2. But InDesign CS2 cannot save down to InDesign 2, which is what we have. Therefor, you'd have to make a PDF."
Her: (uneasy) "Uh...huh...."
Me: "But keep in mind that I cannot edit a PDF, so it's up to you to make sure that you've designed your document with the appropriate color system. In other words, don't use CMYK images when you're printing spot, and don't use spot if you're printing CMYK. Then there's RGB, which is not the same as CMYK or Spot. And make sure the DPI of your images is at least 300. If your PDF has a problem, there could be additional time and cost in getting the file printed."
Her: "O-kay...so, it will cost the same to get these InDesign documents printed as my Publisher ones?"
Me: "Um...yeah, sure."
Let em part with their money for these programs and learn the hard way, I say. My predecessor was sent by mein fuhrer years ago to train a customer how to use Corel Draw, and they completely gave up on it within hours. A few months ago, a customer bought Adobe Acrobat so they could edit their PDFs of their price catalogs (despite my HEAVY, HEAVY warnings that the Touch-up text tool was not the same as a text editor), and surprise, surprise, the client has requested that I make changes to the catalog on my end.