The Text

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It’s always better to have approved, complete text before the design starts. Replacing text, especially in a long document, is time consuming and costly. Providing text in pieces invites errors and adds management time to your project.

In addition to a digital version of the text file, provide a hard copy for reference. The hard copy will help your design firm better understand the text’s hierarchy and see where elements belong. You also can use the hard copy to write explanatory notes such as “this box goes in the section on grants with the photo of Dr. Brown.”

Be careful about over-formatting your text. It’s more efficient to give your design firm a stripped down text document with written notes about the layout than to try to format it yourself. Using multiple hard returns or tabs in a document, even on charts, creates extra work during the design process. Finally, here’s an old typesetting tip…one space (not two) after periods and colons.

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Try to send all of the photos with the text at the beginning of the project. Arrange them in order, section by section, as they must appear in the document. Also provide in a separate text document clearly matched to the file name of each photo. Keying in captions from handwritten notes increases the potential for error.

Digital photos must be high-resolution—300 dpi (dots per inch)—and approximately the same size they will be used in the design or larger. Archived photographs that must be digitized should be scanned professionally. Scanning for offset printing requires training. In truth, if you want crisply printed photos that speak to your readers, invest in the best photography you can afford. Poorly exposed or low resolution images can’t be transformed into quality—even with the magic of Photoshop. This is not the place to cut corners to ease a tight budget.

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Give your design firm as much “real” content as possible to use in the concept development, even if you don't have final text or all photos. Think about every element that will need to be included in the document so that the details can be addressed now. Concepts made up of “dummy” text will probably require significant reworking when you provide the real copy and may add to the cost.

When you’re reviewing and approving the concepts, pay attention to overall layout, type size, color and other big-picture items. But also look carefully at the details. How will each element such as captions, folios, charts or pull quotes be presented in the document? Now is the time to request changes. Increasing the font size by even one point can impact every page.

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Return a complete round of corrections to your design firm on a single set of page proofs. If more than one person in your organization has made changes to the document, compile them into one master set. Faxing or emailing a change here and a change there will make your revision charges mushroom.

Mark the changes clearly on printed proofs in a contrasting color. If you can, use standard proofreader markings. Faxed markups are hard to read, and emailed instructions such as, “paragraph 3 on page 12, line 6: delete the period and add ‘to the top.’” are a nightmare to implement!

If you’re adding text more than one or two sentences long, send it as a digital text file, naming it “insert A” and mark on the printed proofs where the insert goes. A little organization will make you quickly rise to the top of your design firm’s “favorite client” list. But more important, you’ll produce beautiful, error-free publications with no budget aftershock.

—Cynthia Fowler, Vice President