Professional-looking publishing from desktop computers - Management of HR Systems

HR Magazine, June, 1993 by Charlotte LeGates

You've gotten the go-ahead to publish an employee newsletter, but only if the costs are minimal. You're stunned by the high costs of the third bill this year for altering one of your basic training manuals--and it's only June! An injured employee has just told you that he tried to look up the safety procedure he violated but couldn't find it among the 50 pages of dense print his manager gave him on his first day at work.

These are serious publication problems, and you need a serious desktop publishing (DTP) system for your personal computer to help you solve them. PageMaker 4.0 is a frequently selected option.

Word processing or DTP?

In recent years, word-processing programs have evolved to make everyday publications look more like professionally printed materials. Varying type styles and sizes, clean-looking lines and boxes, headers and footers, and printing in two or three columns are features that give organizational announcements and notices a crisp, professional look. If that's all you need, stick with word processing.

Advanced desktop-publishing like PageMaker should be reserved for complex publications that use several story files, texts in boxes or screened (shaded) areas, complex formats with mastheads and photos, multicolumn headlines, text that wraps around graphics, captions or quotes pulled from the text and enlarged to call attention to major points.

What it does

PageMaker allows you to design a complete publication on a computer screen. Initial screens tell you to select the basic size and look of the publication--for example, 24 six-inch by eight-inch vertical pages. You design "master pages" that establish your basic format--for example, two columns, one-inch margins and a line of print on the bottom of every page that indicates the page number and your company's name. You can then move to any page of your publication, call up the names of documents you've written in your word-processing program, select one and place it on the page in the format you've established.

Initial layout work on your publication is generally easiest if you use the option that displays the entire page on the screen. This is a reduced version of your page on which the characters are too small to read. Fortunately, you can blow up parts of pages and use a variety of drawing and editing tools to fine-tune the look of your publication.

Once you place text on the page, you can start to turn your basic double-column word-processed document into a professional-looking article with headlines that go all the way across the page, or you can move part of the article to the next page to make room for a graph that you call up from your graph-making program. You can add a caption to the graph that's in a different type size or style from the headline or the text of your article. You can have two columns on the top of the page and three on the bottom.

And you've only just begun. Arrows in the margin can point out important information. You can arrange your article so that it covers only the top two-thirds of the page and add a shaded box on the bottom third containing related information that you import or bring into the publication from a different article file. You can change any of the text, using common editing tools familiar to you from word processing. You can create borders. You can turn the first letter of an article into a large initial capital. You can create lines, boxes and multiple colors.

In fact, you can get carried away. The power of advanced desktop-publishing tools like PageMaker is so great that beginners can become mesmerized by their new-found ability to create complex pages and documents. If you are not a graphic designer, please, for the sake of your readers, either work with a designer to develop the basic look of the publication or copy a design from one of the many books that illustrate standard designs and give specifications for them.

What we like

The manuals that accompany PageMaker may seem slightly intimidating at first, but they are written in a straightforward, step-by-step manner that takes you from the simple to the more complex. Examples are very clear and indexes complete. The initial training program is divided into sections so you don't have to absorb all the new information at once. And the manuals often explain editing terms that may be unfamiliar.

Technical support is excellent. It may strike HR professionals as a miracle that Aldus seems to consistently hire people with pleasant phone personalities and the patience of Job. They not only answer your questions but provide information you need but didn't know how to request. Different levels of service are available; beginners will find the investment in the highest level of telephone service (which gives you an 800 phone number and unlimited calls) worth the less-than-$200 cost.

What could be improved

The limitations most likely to affect a human resource department are not PageMaker problems at all but limitations of your hardware.

The first problem you are likely to spot is that, when you use headlines in large type sizes, your printer does not produce sharp black letters unless it is one of the newer laser printers. It's the same problem you get with copiers; it's hard to keep toner distributed perfectly evenly in the machine.