Can someone refer pagination software?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on August 22, 2008 at 6:10pm

You may want to take a look at some of these. Personally, I've only done some preliminary evaluations and from what I gathered, they seemed fairly decent.

www.intelligentflatplan.com
www.multiplan.no
www.nowemagine.co.uk

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bill Cox on August 22, 2008 at 7:13pm

Preps is the standard for pagination it has been around for many years....

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on August 23, 2008 at 10:09am

Can you drop a link or URL for more reference? I'm going to copy all of the reference links into the publishing resources group.

Thanks

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on August 23, 2008 at 10:19am

It also occurred to me that Kodak's InSite and Dalim's Mistral has a lot of pagination management options. The systems are quite costly and pagination control would simply be a bi-product of it's core features.

Depending on where your magazine prints, you may have the option of licensing their InSite or Mistral system. In fact, you may already be paying or partially paying for licensing of their system.

Personally, I find InSite to be much more intuitive and user-friendly than Dalim's Mistral.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Monique Convertito on August 26, 2008 at 9:39pm

I use InDesign and basically move little boxes around on a page...:)

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Sullivan on September 5, 2008 at 1:25pm

Try lookin into Magazine Manager or In Design

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Fred Faulkner on September 8, 2008 at 10:33pm

Sounds like you are really in need of an edition planning system. How large are your editions? Do you need to sell ads to locations, color pages, editorial content? How do you manage your editorial content and track story progress?

Your comment that you are not interested in a capital investment leads me to believe your publication(s) are on the smaller end of the spectrum.

There is a Quark extension called CopyFlow Gold that may provide some of the functionality you describe but even it will not do the preplanning of what ads go on what pages or with what editorial content. That's where the more expensive and professional publication systems excel.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Sachin Ghodke on September 12, 2008 at 3:51am

Pagination defined in two ways. From your query i can understand that its either FlatPlan or designing in a Pagination Software.
Flatplan: The ones Joshua mentioned are good and an addition to this would be K4 by MEI (maned.com)
Pagination: Softwares like InDesign and QuarkXPress are the best in the market. I use both and found they both have their advantages and disadvantages. However if you want to quickly work out layout or paginate a magazine then i suggest InDesign. Its fast because if you are familiar with Photoshop and Illustrator the tools and their functions are more or less similar.
Hope this helps. You have got valuable feedback below from some experts in the industry.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on September 12, 2008 at 4:00pm

Good call, Sachin ... I forgot all about K4. From what I've been told that's a great system, as well. I've never used it directly but have contacts who highly recommend K4 and it's overall productivity enhancements to publishers workflows.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Chernoff on September 13, 2008 at 1:54pm

I forgot to mention that we also use Kodak InSite, but it is owned by our printer and we use it for submission of PDFs and then remote proofing of those pages. I really do not see it as a planning system or for laying out a publication. If anyone is using it for that purpose I would be interested, but it strikes me more for printers working with their customers.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Alex Theberge on September 12, 2008 at 3:39pm

I have used Scribus, an FREE open source layout and publishing program. It's not as good as InDesign - but it should help with the floor-puzzle. Hope that helps!

Find it here:
http://www.scribus.net/

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Joshua Thomas on September 12, 2008 at 3:58pm

There's a lot of great suggestions in this discussion, but I think the major advantage to using a pagination application other than a layout program is the ability to have an overall, bird's eye of the entire publication.

Pagination software lets the managing editors and/or publisher (or whomever is in charge) to plan out editorial positions in conjunction with committed ad slots. In other words, you have one place to manage individual article lengths and placements directly along with the ads insertion orders.

They help the user have a better idea of which ads are being placed where, if and what premium ad spots where sold and where they committed to. For example, advertiser A may have requested a right-hand page, advertiser B may have been committed to a special feature but both advertisers have requested to be no where near each other. Multiply this scenario across an entire publication, or group of publications and then across the frequency that advertiser has committed to and you quickly have a real headache!

So I don't really think using layout software is a real good choice unless it is a smaller publication and you're able to sit down with the managing editor and knock it out easily. Also, the magazine's ad/editorial policies would have to be fairly static and easily manageable to be able to do this.

▶ Reply to This

• First
• Previous
• Next
• Last