Blinkplan | Blog

While Joerg is on his way to show off our brilliant software in London, I’ve been working on some flatplans for clients. I’ve been using the new ’save’ as function a whole lot - what a stroke of genius. (I can say that myself, because I didn’t think of it.)

You can base your new flatplan on any previous one stored on Blinkplan, and you can choose between keeping just the page structure (eg, three ads followed by an editorial page etc etc) or you can keep all the previous content. The latter option is particularly cool for mags that have a lot of regular pages. You just edit the few that need to change.

Love it!

Just to let you all know, we will - well, I will - Joerg - be in London for the Magazine Publishing Expo on the 11th and 12th of February. Hope to meet some of you in person!

I hope you all had a good New Year!

We have a new feature for you. When you create a new flatplan, you can base the new one on any of your other flatplans - either only the layout, or the layout plus the content - which is essentially a “Save as…” feature.

So if all your issues are layed out in a very similar fashion, you’ll be able to get a good head start on your next issue, and all you need to do is fill in the content, and make adjustments here and there. Please use the Feedback site to let us know if this solves the “Save as…” problem.

Merry Christmas to all you wonderful people - hope you have a good break, and “see” you again in the new year.

I don’t really get what Thanksgiving is, but happy turkey day Americans.

I know this doesn’t have that much to do with magazine flatplans - or nothing at all really - but worth sharing nevertheless. So beautiful and creative.

Spanish abstract artist Miquel Barcelo used more than 100 tons of paint on the 16,000-square-foot elliptical dome.

Link.

Kerry is in the Maldives this week. So if you have any flatplan / pagination / map questions, and you have been dealing with Kerry directly, please send them to the hello@ address rather.

I have added four more page templates to Blinkplan. So I think we’re now at about 20 different templates. Hopefully this will cover most cases people will come across. If you look at them long enough they start messing with your eyes.

From Folio:

Blinkplan expedites production map design and management processes, creators say

By Vanessa Voltolina

A pair of magazine and software design professionals are targeting magazine publishers with their new program, Blinkplan, which they say offers the most convenient way to draw up flatplans—the diagram, or map, that shows where articles and advertisements are laid out.

Launched this fall, Blinkplan was created by South Africa-based software designer Joerg Diekmann and former magazine managing editor Kerry Rogers. The system, which is accessed at the Blinkplan web site, automatically gives a running subtotal of how many ads, editorial pages, advertorials are in a given issue. The system can create PDFs and re-flows pages when a spread is moved. Up to three maps can be worked on at the same time.

Diekmann and Rogers spent about a year-and-a-half in testing phases before working with their first magazine client: the South African edition of Cosmopolitan. “They used it for about six months until the product evolved into what it is now,” Diekmann wrote in an e-mail FOLIO:.

After working with the magazine, Diekmann and Rogers discovered that Blinkplan’s process reduces the time to produce a map (using conventional spreadsheet, design package and all-inclusive systems) by half. “We definitely want to get more glossies on board like Cosmopolitan, but we think Blinkplan is also right for smaller trade magazines, contract magazines, and other business-to-business type magazines,” Diekmann wrote. “There are so many magazines that cannot afford bigger, and more fully featured systems.”

A monthly subscription to the Blinkplan system costs $29 per month. Weekly magazines can opt for a package deal ($55 per month) that stores 12 maps at a time, the company says.

From Print Media Management:

Blinkplan, an online flatplan system, has been launched,which saves time and helps prevent potentially costly pagination mistakes at print stage

Blinkplan, an online flatplan system, has been launched,which saves time and helps prevent potentially costly pagination mistakes at print stage, the company says.
Implemented through a web browser, Blinkplan’s online flatplan system automatically reflows pages when a spread is relocated, removing the need to manually shift spreads and rename them, and displays a running subtotal of how many adverts and editorial pages.

The system calculates ideal locations for bind-ins and checks content-filled pages against print section sizes to make sure they match up. It also generates a PDF to easily email or print the flatplan, allowing colleagues to view. Payment is calculated according to the number of flatplans required.