One workflow for two products: Medienhaus Schwäbischer Verlag will upgrade its central planning and production system PlanPag to include the magazine workflow package and the InDesign plugin LayoutLink to design and produce its editorial pages and advertorials. The publishing company will thereby significantly increase its services for producing magazine-like products.

In Leutkirch, product diversification played a major role in the decision to upgrade the production workflow. With enhanced functions in PlanPag for placing ads and editorial content in the bleed, the solution for integrated magazine production offered by ppi Media, a subsidiary of manroland, fully meets these requirements. "By enhancing our workflow we aim to sustainably optimize our entire production." The integration of magazine production in PlanPag and the comprehensive layout functions in InDesign, which is linked to our workflow via LayoutLink, is the best solution for us," says Klaus Zellmer, head of MSG Media Service.

Bleed ads
At Schwäbischer Verlag, the ppi upgrade will mean that newspapers and magazine-like products will be centrally planned and produced in one system. "Quite a complex task for our software," says Norbert Ohl, COO at ppi Media. "Layout options such as bleed ads are not available for newspapers and this poses a real challenge for many system solutions. Two separate workflows, one for newspaper editions and one for magazines, are far too time-consuming, labor- and cost-intensive."

And this is how ppi's magazine workflow originated. PlanPag manages and processes the net size of an ad during placement. If ads have a bleed flag, they can be placed in the trim area outside the page grid and repositioned any time. The ads are placed either automatically or by drag and drop, ensuring that they are positioned at the right place in the bleed together with their bleed allowance. Since redundant bleed allowances on the inside of the page are not automatically trimmed until assembly takes place, it must be ensured that ads, elements and editorial content with a bleed flag have a constant circumferential bleed. "For us the implications are clear: greater flexibility, easier planning and higher automation," says Klaus Zellmer, summing up the advantages of ppi Media's magazine workflow.