What Is The Content Creator’s Role

The success of print projects today largely depends upon two things: the efficiency of the workflow and the quality of the content. Depending on where in the print manufacturing workflow you reside, you may receive digital content for any number of sources — some, more experienced in creating digital files for print than others.

Even the simplest of creative errors, such as improperly spec’d color space, resolution or missing fonts, can stall the print production workflow — costing both time and money to remedy. The ideal workflow eliminates problematic digital files as far away from the press as possible — at content creation, preferably.

Stop The Madness: At The Creative Stage
Steven Stelter’s career in the graphic arts industry began in the art department at a Milwaukee television station, where he was responsible for maintaining a Web site and designing both on-air graphics and print projects.

Subsequently, Stelter held positions with a marketing firm and a 200-person ad agency, where he honed his print production skills further, producing everything from brochures to billboards.

Stelter founded his current company — Seattle-based Stelter Design — in 2002, sort of by happenstance. “I pulled up stakes [in Milwaukee] and moved out to Seattle in 2000. I had a number of interviews with design firms in Seattle, but the economy and dot.com fallout was starting, and I never landed a staff job,” Stelter recalls. “I began doing contract work … First, production work, but over the years, that switched to design and art direction.”

According to the founder, Stelter Design caters to small and mid-sized companies that “may have a marketing director, but may not have a designer.” Stelter Design’s clientel mostly reside in the great Seattle and Milwaukee regions. Among its clients are Wisconsin Lutheran Child and Family Services and Westward Seafoods.

Stelter estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of the work he produces is destined for print. While he’s responsible for the majority of inspiration behind his work, Stelter does, occasionally, receive content from his customers: “Yes, we often get Microsoft Word docs and occasionally a rough Publisher or PageMaker doc to show a rough layout of what the client is thinking or trying to express to me.”

Stelter’s core creative applications include: Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Acrobat. Complementing his creative workflow, Stelter also uses a pre and post flight solution from Markzware, called FlightCheck.

FlightCheck Professional “looks inside” digital files (in a variety of formats, including native application files, PDFs, and standards-based print industry files like PDF/X-1as) and analyzes whether the file is complete and accurately created for it’s print intentions.

“If a file leaves the office, it’s been ‘FlightChecked,” Stelter affirms. “I have worked with it for about four years now, and what I love about it is the ability to examine all the linked files of a Quark or InDesign file — such as Illustrator files — and ensure they are in the correct color mode and resolution It will also warn me if they are not compatible with my file release standards,”

While Adobe’s InDesign does have a post-flight feature for verifying PDF files, FlightCheck is capable of post-flighting PDFs as well as a whole slew of other formats, including native application files and standards-based PDF/x-1a files. “Adobe InDesign has a built-in [postflight] tool; however, it does not tell what it is doing or give me as much information about what is wrong, when a file is wrong,” Stelter explains.

Proofing provides another layer of quality control. “I have an Epson Stylus 300 with an iproof systems’ PowerRIPX running on a standalone server,” Stelter explains. “I also send low-res and high-res PDF files for any projects I release on CD-ROM. On Occasion, we’ll have a client with more exact color specifications, so we’ll go to a service bureau for a Matchprint.”

Back To The Beginning
To ensure a favorable outcome, quality-control measures must be built into each stage of the print production workflow — at content creation, production, prepress and, of course, on press.

No matter the file format in play, digital content files should be verified and re-verified by time it’s manipulated in any way. And print suppliers should support their customers by providing best practices and solution suggestions that enable them to prepare digital files properly and utilize other quality-control means, like digital proofing. Learning the basics of print production and file creation presents new opportunities for content creators — not only to develop a new set of skills, but also to be more of a contributor to the print job’s success.