Before we go deep into why publishers should use flat planning software, we first need to understand what a Flat-Plan is?
Yes, it’s very different from what architects plan when designing a condominium that you want to live in. Publishers create flat plans for their publications – newspapers, magazines, and even for comics or children’s books.
Flat-plan shows the layout and position of all the articles and advertisements. The objective of a flat plan is to define the order in which each piece of content will be displayed in the publication. This provides a good level of control for production and gives clarity to all stakeholders; especially, at the sign-off stage.
Earlier flat planning was done with cutouts of paper stick to pasteboard that was fully visible to the production team. These ‘paper flat plans’ got moved around manually, depending on the priorities of advertisements and breaking news in the case of newspapers. Even for magazines and books, the pages were annotated, followed by whatever changes had been marked out.
At present, computer software has eased this process with software that automates flat planning. The ‘digital flat plans’ are now created by using dummy jabberwocky, or extracting content from a server and placing it in page layout software – like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress.
This automation and speed is the biggest advantage of using flat planning software.
When extended to ad management software or layout, collaboration solutions help writers, editors, designers, and layout production teams get onto a common platform that streamlines the workflow and update the pages with approved text, images, and artwork. If you’re looking for powerful flat planning software for InDesign or QuarkXPress, for your newspaper or magazine, make sure it can handle page numbering, dummy image upload, flow reorganizing, notes, and has accurate printing.
Get your team to focus on the creative work they are great at and leave the flat planning and calculation to the software.