over 9 years ago from Matt Lindley, Product/Design
We have some flyers, data sheets, etc. and we would like non-designers to be able to edit things like text and maybe inline images. We have tried editable PDFs in the past and it did not go well. How do you guys do this? Editable PDFs? Give them copies of creative suite? Other options?
I know a designer that does the layout in indesign, then uses word publishing view to remake it in word. You have to explain to the client that it's not a perfect solution, and fonts can be an issue. Personally, I hope to never have to do this. link to tutorial
Interesting idea, thanks!
I've successfully used Pages for this sort of thing in the past. It's closer to indesign model than Word is, and the templating you can use is pretty flexible.
To expound on my comment, if you use Keynote, make sure you set up proper templates and text styles and enforce them. Otherwise you'll spend lots of time rearranging things.
Interesting idea. How does this work for print items though? Seems kind of like a weird hack-y way to go about this.
Keynote!
Or Powerpoint
Or Paint
Keynote's pdf export has gotten better in the most recent version - and is painfully easy to use.
Keynote is becoming a magic bullet, it is amazing for wire framing, didn't even occur to me o use it for this.
If you are on a Mac I'd recommend having your designs created with Pages. Its a cheap program and can yield beautiful designs : )
Yeah, we are all Mac here. After all the comments here I am looking into pages and keynote. Thanks!
In my experience people always just ask a designer to make the edits. When non-designers make changes - even just text - you still end up with problems like line breaks where they shouldn't be, whitespace issues, poor use of text formatting, or character encoding problems from text being pasted in. Once people start trying to add images as well, you get a whole new set of issues.
Yeah, I know what you mean, but it would be a huge plus to not have to do this for everything. I feel like there should be a better solution. If we can make webpages with a cms that allows easy collaboration and editing, why can't there be a similar solution for print?
For a banner campaign I made a set of banners in PS with different sizes, custom headers and a bunch of buttons. The non designer is putting in his content in GIMP. You can work with .psd files within Gimp but you have to rasterize layer effects and gradients to make it work well.
You could always make an app: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/psd-tools or LayerVault's very own: https://cosmos.layervault.com/psdrb.html
If I were you, I'd make a web page and host it on GH pages. Make a print style sheet, rejoice.
On github pages, anyone can make edits to files and have it update live. You controlling the CSS gives you full control, and the best part is there's no special software!!
Login to Comment
You'll need to log in before you can leave a comment.
LoginRegister Today
New accounts can leave comments immediately, and gain full permissions after one week.
Register now