Good, but bad

[gnubler]

We've all had our share of crappy files and just plain odd methods that some "professionals" use in their submitted files, but I got one yesterday that really takes the cake. And this isn't really a rant OR a rave - I just call it job security.

It's a 12-month calendar, 4/4, layed out in InDesign CS2. I had to download a Stuffit archive from our FTP site from the client. All 138Mb of it. My curiousity was on the high side as I had to wait quite some time for the file to download. Here's what I got:

Twenty six "Collect for Output" folders from InDesign - complete with Instructions, Links, and the same Fonts folder 26 times. Yes, it's true. Each page of this calendar - that's front cover, monthly pictures, calendar grids, and back cover - was a separate file. And even better - the pages, 10.5 x 8", were layed out centered on 11x17 documents with handmade crop marks. And the grid pages? They were placed AI graphics. I guess someone hasn't discovered the cool table feature in InDesign that makes laying out a calendar grid extremely easy and light. Also, the concept of Master Pages - which would have been really useful for this project - wasn't used at all (though with separate files for each page it's pointless anyway).

The weird thing is, the work wasn't crap or amateur. Heavy on the drop shadows, but otherwise pretty good - including high-res CMYK graphics. But why someone would create something like this in separate files is beyond me.

I ended up just grouping and dragging each separate document into one 26 pager. Took about 35 minutes.

And people wonder why they are charged for prepress time.

[Pointyhat]

Why did you change your name?

[gnubler]

This is it now. I'm gnubler from now on. Consider it another Jezza scenario.

[Pointyhat]

*shrugs*

[SlaveToTheMan]

Yeah, I've almost stopped trying to get into their tiny, scrambled designer brains to understand the way things are put together. Although, we do have one fairly new client that does something strange. It's not bad, or causing any problems, it's just - odd.

On every single page in say a 24-page Quark file, in the upper left corner there's a square box placed, with no fill and it's about 1/2" square. It's never on a Master Page, and it doesn't ever bleed even if the page has elements that do bleed. A placeholder of some kind? I don't get it, and eventually I'll break down & have to ask. :?

[Cory]

I just received my FAVORITE job of the year.

it's a yearbook for a highschool.

comes in as pagemaker 7 files, one file per page. this year I received a CD with 187 pagemaker docs, no links or fonts :roll:

[slartybartfast]

I'll bet it's so they copy and paste everything on a page to another doc and only have to type in
x=0
y=0

[Joe]

I get jobs like this with one file for each page. Their reasoning is because they have more than one person working on them and if all the pages are in one document only one person can open it at a time. Don't bring up workgroup collaboration unless you want to see the "deer in the headlights" look.

[DCurry]

Originally Posted by SlaveToTheMan

On every single page in say a 24-page Quark file, in the upper left corner there's a square box placed, with no fill and it's about 1/2" square. It's never on a Master Page, and it doesn't ever bleed even if the page has elements that do bleed.

I've seen that, although I can't remember exactly who the customer is. Could be the same customer, given our proximity.

[paris]

I remember the little square box in the corner.

There was a bug in Quark 3 or 3.5 I think. It had something to do with the pages not centering on output unless there was something on the zero mark. At that time we were outputting film to a Lino. We had to put it on every single page for a few months until an update fixed it.

We currently get files from 3 customers who still put that little box there.