Digital ad standards are on the way - includes related article on Family Circle

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 1, 1993 by Len Egol

There's a lot of motivation for publishers to produce a 100 percent digital magazine, not least of which is the cost savings and production efficiencies inherent in going direct from computer to printing press.

Already, several large circulation consumer tides that are printed gravure, such as Family Circle and Modern Maturity, have successfully produced editorial sections from digital data transmitted directly to cylinder engraving mechanisms. In fact, Vito Colaprico, senior vice president of manufacturing at the New York Times Co. Women's Magazine Group, told a group of seminar attendees at the Folio: conference in New York in November that conceivably all of Family Circle's editorial would be produced filmless early this year, and that other Times publications would be following suit.

"But it isn't completely cost-effective to print editorial sections from digital data and the ads from film," says Mary Lee Schneider, desk-top publishing product manager for R.R. Donnelley & Sons' magazine division in New York City.

The biggest reason for the lag between digital editorial and advertising is that despite occasional experiments, such as Newsweek's recent fully digital ad for the GM Card, the advertising community is reluctant to support direct-to-print imaging without uniform standards.

Advertisers also are skeptical about the state-of-the-art digital proofing systems and won't risk a pricey media buy without the security of seeing color proofs from film.

But that could change soon, predicts Patrice Dunn, publisher of "The Dunn Report," a newsletter that deals with computer publishing technology. Dunn, who is a technical adviser to the recently formed Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publications (DDAP) committee, calls the standards issue "90 percent political, and 10 percent technological."

Joseph Pedone, director of print services for Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in New York, heads DDAP, which has 80 representatives from all strata of the production and publishing world.

The issue is: no standards,

no advertisers.

DDAP is developing standards that can be used in situations where completed ad pages, sets of pages or partial pages are distributed in print-ready, color-approved form to multiple print sites for use in several publications. Without uniform standards, ads could run afoul of production processes at different magazines and printers.

DDAP already has gotten its diverse members to agree on a User Requirement Specification that establishes digital ad requirements including definitions, editability, sizing, color issues and proofing. The next step is for the industry-wide Committee on Graphic Arts Standards to come up with technical standards that meet what the DDAP members want. Dunn optimistically says these standards could be available at the end of this year. "It's not all that difficult, since about 90 percent of the technical work already is done," she says.

Although Dunn concedes that the graphic arts world doesn't move quickly, if everyone involved works together, the first fully digital magazine - editorial and ads - could be available in about two years.

Family Circle goes totally, technically digital

The February 2 issue of Family Circle marks the first time - technically - that a major consumer title was produced entirely from digital input sent directly to gravure cylinder. The editorial pages used no intermediate film, while the advertising pages, traditionally supplied on film, were converted on a flatbed scanner into digital files and merged with page data on an optical disk.

"The move to 100 percent digital technology gives us more detail, sharper images, improved contrast and overall better color fidelity," says Vito Colaprico, of The New York Times Company's magazines division. It also shortens the production cycle by eliminating manual cylinder correction problems and costly wet-proofing.

The February 23 issue will go a step further, with an ad from J. Walter Thompson in Chicago. The agency is supplying digital data and a digital proof for Kraft Miracle Whip.

Since late 1991, Colaprico and production director Cathy Merolle have worked with R.R. Donnelley's Mattoon, Illinois, plant to convert editorial from a film-dominated environment. The first bound-in, fully digital sections were produced last summer.

Colaprico identifies the development of reliable digital proofing as a key element in making his new filmless system possible. "It's the publishing technology of the future," he says. "It's as important as the move from hot type to cold type, or the introduction of halftone gravure."

But because the publication is not on Macintosh completely, there have been some bumps along the way, says FC editor Jackie Leo. "We had to folio the pages internally rather than at the separator," she says. "Also, the closing teams have had to be very diligent because there wouldn't be any patches later on." But the improvement in quality has made all the extra effort worthwhile, she adds.