FlightCheck User Interview- PDF, Designers and Bicycles

Markzware User Story -- This spontaneous interview all started on Friday the 16th of May. The sun was shining and business was good at Markzware Europe. Then we got a call. A designer wanted to purchase FlightCheck. No problem, we normally just pass them through too a local resellers, but Mr. Paul de Boer (that is his name) said no, no- please, I live down the street in The Hague and will bike over and pick up the DVD of the software. OK, "the coffee stands ready" (A Dutch saying), we agreed, bending the rules for this time- after all it is not every day that someone picks up their order via bicycle. Riding your bike is a mainstay in Holland and many of us use them to get to work every day, rain or shine. I mean even 80 year olds and the likes.

After talking to Paul, it was clear that he had a lot of prepress and design experience. As a matter of a fact, he just was done with arguing with the printer over his latest InDesign job- a 100-page art book, which demanded perfection and quality (of course). The printer wanted a cPDF or Certified PDF. But Paul knew from experience that delivering a closed up PDF, made editing more difficult- especially on a detailed, multi-page book. Yes, PDF editors like PitStop can do some things, but this book had no room for error and too many times small edits in a source or native files become large nightmares in a PDF. Even with Paul's experience, errors do happen. He knows that and it was this reason he cruised over to grab his FlightCheck. (ICC Profiles were a particular concern for him- thus colour in general.)

What was interesting to add to this story, is just yesterday a large Dutch printer was telling us how the market was moving away from demanding only PDF files and that they had no problem with this, due to the many last-minute issues. Many creatives or designers prefer to send in the native Adobe InDesign, Illustrator or QuarkXPress files- this way perfection (and easy editing) is far more likely to go off without any issues. PDF is great, it has its place, but many still prefer to work in and deliver the native, source file.

In this interview Paul goes over these facts, talks more about his business and background. Enjoy and below is a bit more information on Paul and his firm:

Atelier Paul de Boer is specialized in graphic design, web-design, DTP and assistance in the entire workflow of the Printing and Media or printmedia (prepress included). Most clients are found in the cultural- and art world. Atelier Paul de Boer creates art-books, invitations, posters, video presentations, websites, etc. The main advantage with Atelier Paul de Boer is that they understand the wishes of the client and realizes those wishes into high quality products against very reasonable rates.

For more info, see:
http://www.pauldeboer.eu

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• FlightCheck
• Markzware
• Paul
• de
• Boer
• Atelier
• PDF
• PitStop
• problems
• QuarkXPress
• InDesign
• Interview
• designer
• preflight
• ICC

[leegrafx]

Sending Native files to a printer creates more problems such as missing or corrupted fonts and program compatabilty issues. Besides, native files are likely going to be converted by a printer to PDF or a postscript file before it;s sent to plate.