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The Online Designer Tool - What is in Store?

By Tony Goold

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 02Dec2009
Word count: 649
Viewed: 237 time(s)

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There are many online print companies that now provide much more than the usual quotation. There are numerous programs available online that enable a user to go on the internet and use a simple tool that produces a piece of artwork that can go straight to print. Companies such as VistaPrint.com, and IPrint.com are some of the better online print websites.

What is required by the non print literate is the provision of a simple to use tool that can be used to convert the complex native tools such as In-Design, QuarkXPress and MS Publisher in to an easier friendlier system. This though can pose two problems:- 1. How do you reduce the file size into a fast downloadable applet, and 2. How do you put across a complex tool in a simple to use and intuitive format? The one answer is a solution to both issues. Reduce the complexity and reduce the toolset into the most commonly used features that it will service 80% of the requirement.

Another basic problem is that most print websites believe that template design is what people require, when in fact they require more flexibility. If this flexibility is available in the design tool, I believe it will result in bringing more users to this design tool.

So what sort of features should be made available to the user? I believe that common features such as the creation of a text field, the drawing of simple geometric shapes, object properties such as alignment, outline colour, fill colour, line weight are the characteristics that we will see spread to the fore in online designer tools. Tools such as these can be developed in many ways but Flash, Xml and other platforms will be the norm.

The designers of the future internet tools will not alone be required to examine the functionality but also evaluate the usefulness of the features themselves as to its worthiness to be integrated into the main programme, every feature added increases the overall size, it can slow down the application and can add to the complexity and can reduce the usability for some users. Bringing a user through the customisation section of an order process is important. The longer a potential customer remains in a queue the more likely they are to dump the product and go to another site. Simple and Speedy makes the sale.

Online proofing of artwork will also be necessary to provide the customer with a final resemblance of the finished item. A PDF will most likely be used for this as the Adobe colour model is already integrated and is a proven colour system. The final artwork is produced in PDF format. “PROOF” is normally watermarked across the final artwork to ensure the product is printed in-house with the website that issued the artwork. With a proof it should also be possible to park a design, download the proof and get another person to view it, check for spelling and all the other things I am not good at. A proof is good as it puts a sense of finalisation in front of the client, Customers should have to sign off the “terms and conditions” so they understand what their responsibility is to the process and what they can expect to have delivered. Too many time have i been on the end of a phone with a customer who has a typo on a document and expected the online “automatic proofer” to catch it. Customers are being educated slowely that a reduced cost means the extraction of some goodies from the order process, these “goodies” can vary from site to site, but it is the customers responsibility to read the obligated delivery from the site, as when you are paying €10 for a set of business cards in Ireland, it is the onus of the customer to check the spelling of his name on the card.

At http://www.Printclever.ie You can take one of our range of professionally-designed templates and customise it, or you can design your own with our full-featured online design tool. Whichever route you take, there are no extra charges. Our prices are stated up front and clearly. And our quality is too. With http://www.Printclever.ie what you see is what you get.

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