The idea behind adding write-first to your workflow, is to provide options. By using styles, you’re indicating the role of text elements with the click of a button and formatting simply becomes a side-benefit of that process. Although this method works, in the end, the designer has to spend time to remove that additional text from the final version. Traditionally I’ve often see users put brackets or some other indicator in the text to indicate that > or >. The reality is that the editorial staff needs to in some way indicate the role of different text elements such as headings, subheads, captions, bold, italic, etc. The goal of the write-first implementation is not to make designers out of editors. I hear this one all too often when I talk about this type of workflow. After the content is finalized however, you may decide that it makes sense for someone on the editorial side to flow the Word document into InCopy, apply some basic formatting, and then pass the InCopy stories onto design. For example, it may still be necessary to pass the Word document back and forth between the author and the editor until the article or content is finalized. Many times it’s a complement to the traditional Word to InDesign workflow. This workflow isn’t necessarily a replacement for Microsoft Word. Because InCopy and InDesign share the exact same type engine, formatting is retained when InCopy stories are placed in an InDesign layout.By using bold, italic, and bold italic character styles, formatting is retained throughout the entire workflow. Writers and Editors can now visually see the content how it’s actually going to appear in the final product including proper vertical spacing between elements. There are numerous benefits to this approach: With a well designed InCopy template, this provides editorial staff with styles that they need to apply basic formatting to content such as headings, subheads, body, bold, and italic. In this situation, editorial staff actually write content in Adobe InCopy. Introducing Write-FirstĪ variant of the InCopy workflow is what I refer to as the write-first workflow. In addition, formatting the copy can be time consuming for the designer and if care is not taken, there’s the potential to lose critical formatting such as bold and italics during the layout process. If changes need to be made to the copy, editorial staff has to wait until the content is made available. In many organizations, there’s often a lull from the time copy is sent to design until it is made available to them for edit in InCopy. Because it works! There are limitations though. There’s a reason why this workflow is so widely used. One of the most common InDesign/InCopy workflows begins in Adobe Indesign where the designer lays out the document and then makes content available to InCopy users by exporting InCopy stories so that the layout or assignment can then be edited using Adobe InCopy. The reason for this is simply because no two companies are the same. Although there are some common workflow configurations that are widely used in the industry, I have to say that no two InCopy configurations are exactly the same. One of the things that makes InCopy such a powerful tool for publishing workflows, is the numerous ways in which it can be implemented.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |