: Workflow problems and Proofreading I have a situation with my company. Every time there's a project I never get the final copy to start my design work. The constant changes and many hands getting
I have a situation with my company. Every time there's a project I never get the final copy to start my design work. The constant changes and many hands getting involved is making my workflow suffer and I am being blamed for missing stuff and my proofreading suffers tremendously. I do not know what to do to explain this to them. I have the type of boss hat "needs to see things first" so he know what to write. It drives me up the wall.
Anyone else has this problem? How can I improve this situation?
More posts by @Shakeerah625
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Take control.
You probably need to prepare a simple inphography of the current workdflow, and some solutions on diferent steps of the process.
I once prepared a Lorem Ipsum simulation with 2 diferent fonts, and 3 diferent font sizes. Once they knew visually the fonts, we choosed one font and a specific size.
The next step was preparing based on that font, a character count example, so I prepared a page with (for example) 500, 1000, 1500 characters including spaces, so people knew more or less how much space there is on each case (and how to find that information on Word).
After this people learned to make more concise texts, because people apreciated that the less texts it has, more space for images or simply air, which elevated the visual quality of the project.
People need to learn not to fill spaces with usless "information".
Another thing to do is defining version names.
Take a look at this question What is your file naming convention you use for version control?
And another thing, use coperative software.
If ou are using Indesign you could take a look at InCopy, that provides some colaboratve tools for text editing, and then this text is integrated in the InDesign file.
Avoid "I sent you the Word file by email".
If you are in a position to be able to speak up, I don't think it's unreasonable at all to let your co-workers know that the lack of finality on the copy they give you is causing problems in the design workflow. One company I worked for, for example, never had a real in house designer before me, so they had no clue how to interact with me. Your situation may be the same and they could be looking for guidance from you. Otherwise, if your boss insists on writing content to fit the design (gag), you could try laying something out, slap in some Lorem Ipsum and let him be responsible for constraining his writing to fit your text blocks.
For hailstorms of copy edits, keep a log of who sends changes and when, and make that information available during any conversations where you could end up taking blame for anything.
Finally, take ownership if the opportunity to bring about positive change! Devise an improved workflow for these projects and try to get your coworkers on board. If your idea improves the situation, you can take all the credit :)
Honesty and diplomacy is always best.
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