Blinkplan | Blog

REVOLUTIONARY FLATPLAN SOFTWARE PACKAGE DEVELOPED BY SMALL SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS

A magazine flatplan is like one of those little puzzles with eight squares that, when arranged correctly in their plastic frame, form a picture. It takes a lot of shuffling to get one right. And like the puzzle, a flatplan usually involves a lot of re-doing, time-wasting and hair-pulling.

Once you think you have the correct number of pages, you need to count the ads to make sure you haven’t missed one, and you can count on someone interrupting you just as you reach the end, causing you to have to start again.

And just when you’ve established that you have the correct number of ads, editorial pages, advertorials, etc, chances are you’ll realise that the DPS on page 100 would be better off on page 10. Then begins the process of manually shifting 45 DPSs along one slot in order to relocate the spread.

In the meantime, an impatient team is asking you, ‘What’s taking so long? It’s just a bunch of blocks!’

What are the options for creating a flatplan?

Spreadsheets

A spreadsheet makes a nice neat flatplan with a small file size. It can be sent out to sales and creative teams alike because most people are able to open spreadsheets. On the down side, it takes a lot of time to format and re-flowing has to be done manually.

Design packages

Using a design package to create a flatplan allows a fair amount of visual flexibility, but the files are huge. PDFs are fairly easily generated but the plans are only modifiable by someone with the software – and the hardware to support the software. Manual re-flowing and totalling make this a time-consuming method.

All-inclusive systems

Some design-and-production systems (often costing in the hundreds of thousands) include a pagination package. This is only viable if you need the full package. In the tight, competitive SA market, most SA publishers prefer to put their resources into quality.

Now there’s a fourth option: Web expert Joerg Diekmann and magazine pro Kerry Rogers have spent just over a year developing Blinkplan, a secure online package that speeds up the flatplan-design process significantly. It’s cost effective and simple, and among other things, it:

-       reflows affected spreads automatically when a spread is relocated

-       automatically displays a running subtotal of how many ads, editorial pages, advertorials (up to 20 self-defined categories) there are

-       automatically calculates stitch-in locations

-       has a safe backup system, works on pretty much any machine with a modern web browser, and generates PDFs for easy viewing and printing

In this economic climate, when budget constraints mean many magazine employees are carrying the workload of more than one staff member each, no employer can afford to pay someone to sit for hours counting little blocks on a page. The Blinkplan system saves a lot of time and helps prevent potentially costly pagination mistakes at print stage. It is also inexpensive and can be run on PC or Mac with a modern web browser.

Blinkplan’s originators

Joerg Diekmann: A ninja software designer with over twelve years experience in building web applications

Kerry Rogers: A former managing editor (and flatplan-maker) of one of SA’s top-selling magazines, with eight years’ editorial and production experience in the consumer and custom magazine-publishing industries.

For more info, visit www.blinkplan.com