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Taking Control One of XV’s most complicated publishing jobs, aside from the Friends of the Earth catalogue, is to produce a 16-page A5 product price list for its trade customers. "It’s obviously important to keep this up-to-date, but with outside design agencies we weren’t in control of the production schedule so their work didn’t always fit in with the needs of our other business operations, or reflect sudden changes in product details," says Steve Hack, XV’s Business Development Manager. "We found we were wasting stock, not least because we had to order so much and it would rapidly become out-of-date." Since XV already had a network of PCs and laser printer capacity, it calculated that the only outlay in bringing its product publishing needs in-house, would be the purchase of the desktop publishing software and the learning time required by staff who co-ordinate the production of the company’s product marketing materials. With no experience of commercial desktop publishing in-house, XV looked for a solution that could easily be learnt by a novice within a reasonable time. It was also important that it should be an industry standard solution widely used by XV’s external design agencies. "It was clear that the only choice was Adobe’s PageMaker software," says Hack. "You don’t need to be a design expert to create high quality work. It’s also the software that our design agencies use." Ease of Use PageMaker was duly installed during a quiet period in the company’s trading, and Hack and a colleague then gradually learned to use it by working with the manual. "PageMaker is much easier to use than you think and I was soon able to create the templates for the product information materials and stop using the outside agencies for the work altogether," says Hack. The software feature that Hack is most impressed with is PageMaker’s ability to flow text over pages and into columns automatically, taking account of changes wherever they are introduced. XV’s price list booklet would be very hard to lay out without this feature since it is assembled in non-sequential pages. "The business benefits from using the PageMaker software easily paid for its purchase within months," says Hack. He adds, "Over the years we’ve saved a massive amount by publishing the product documents in-house, and I think we’re doing a better job too. When you design something yourself you work on it for longer until you’re completely happy with it. The time it takes is no more than we would spend briefing an agency, plus we no longer have to compromise on designs that aren’t quite right."
A better image XV has revamped its leaflet designs using PageMaker in-house, and is also producing more marketing materials than it would otherwise have been able to afford using an external agency. The company also believes that responses to its mail shots have increased partly because it is able to provide customers with more information, and partly because XV’s image is now better reflected in its promotional materials. "Ultimately, PageMaker has enabled us to respond more quickly and easily to changes needed in our promotional documents," says Hack. "Not only do we have a higher level of control over their production but we’re also saving money and we’re more professional in our business than before. Crucially, we no longer have to scrap materials, and that’s very important because it means that we’re one step closer to practising what we preach!"
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