#14: How do I work with designers?

After you’ve submitted your first manuscript to the client and/or speaker, you will probably have to go through several rounds of amendments before it is finally approved. After consent has been obtained from both the client and speaker, the manuscript will be passed on to the designer, whose responsibility is to lay it out in the form of a bulletin.

Working with designers
The designer’s work is relatively easy for publications such as highlights bulletin and newsletter, as the design should pretty much reflect the client’s product or company, e.g. using colors of the product packaging, photo elements from the ads.

As the project manager, your responsibility is to feed the designer on information as shown below:
-- Specifications of the publication – for example the size (e.g. A4, A5), number of pages (e.g. 2 pages, 4 pages), number of folds (e.g. one fold, two folds)
-- Design elements to be incorporated – including colors to use, company logo, product logo, font type, photos of speaker(s), product shot (if required)
-- Whether there are any special sections, such as a question-and-answer section, a segment for discussion, boxes that highlight important messages.

What do you check?
When the design is complete, it’s time for you to carefully check through the layout on several aspects, making sure that:
-- All necessary elements are included, including logos, graphs, tables, photos, reference list and others.
-- Title of the bulletin and subtitles within the text are set in the appropriate font size and colors.
-- The latest version (and not the outdated one!) of the logos is used.
-- Graphs and tables are placed at the right place, e.g. after, and not before, a particular paragraph. Also, check that the numbering of graphs is in sequence.
-- Text columns are aligned at the top and bottom, left and right; indentation is consistent (e.g. first line of all paragraphs should be indented); “widow” or “orphan” (see explanation at the bottom) is avoided.
-- All kinds of mistakes or misplacements are corrected, checked AND rechecked, before submitting the layout to your client. Better safe than sorry!


Note:
When a paragraph starts at the bottom of a page (or column) with only the first line fits on the bottom of the page (or column), while the rest is continued on the next page (or column), it is known as a “widow”.

When a paragraph starts on one page (or column), while the last line of the paragraph starts at the top of the next page (or column), it is called an “orphan”.