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Standards and the Creative Community—I know there are many graphic arts pro-fessionals out there who would laugh atthat title. They would argue that it is a lost

cause trying to convince creatives that standards orspecifications like SWOP, GRACOL, SNAP or PDF/Xshould be used to facilitate and ensure the bestresult for their work. They would say creativessimply don’t care about that stuff!

On the contrary, I believe that creatives not onlyembrace standards today, but also think it is a “no-brainer” that they should be using standards as anintegral part of their workflow. Collectively theyknow that all of us couldn’t move forward in a com-petitive and shifting neutral media environmentwithout graphic arts standards. They fully under-stand that they need to integrate standards for asmooth and efficient print workflow. I believe thatthe 2007 creative professional community “gets it.”To me, it’s that straightforward and that simple.

You may well ask what is the reasoning behindmy thinking that the creative community of today isvery much in favor of and accepting of the use ofstandards. A very good question and to best answerit I believe it is vital that we should first take a freshlook at who makes up the professional creativecommunity of 2007. Then take a glance back atwhat I consider to be the three most significantmilestones in the last 30 plus years that helpedshape this conclusion.

Defining the Creative CommunityWho is the creative community of 2007? I think it isessential to recognize that the creative community

today is definitely not the same one that many ofus knew as recently as 10 or 15 years ago. We arelooking at a sector of the graphic arts that is defi-nitely shifting and changing quite rapidly. Anupdated definition of who makes up the new cre-ative community might read something like this: “Abroad spectrum of design professionals who comefrom a multiplicity of disciplines.”

A counterpoint might be that not all creatives areinfluencing or even associated with anything in theprint arena, but again I must respectfully disagree.Consider how all encompassing today’s professionalcreative community has become and how it hasreached into areas that many of us were not evenaware of as recently as just five years ago.

For instance, this past January in New York City,the Digital Ad Lab (DAL), completed an out-standing two-part series that was presented by twotop professional photographers who discussedoptimization and best practices in digital photog-raphy. A good portion of their presentation wascentered on standards, file formats, color manage-ment and how it all has an impact on the finalprinted product. Now I ask you, 10 years ago wouldgraphic arts professionals have seriously enter-tained the thought of attending a presentation fromprofessional photographers lecturing about colormanagement and SWOP?

Also, at the same DAL presentation, the compo-sition of the attending audience was not just madeup of prepress professionals and production folks;the audience also included art directors, designers,studio personnel, publishers, design firms, artbuyers, photographers, and IT professionals and

Standards & theCreative CommunityCreatives today not only embrace standards but alsosee them as an integral part of their workflow.

BY ROY ZUCCA

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digital tech support companies that work with pro-fessional photographers and creatives. I would sug-gest that we might consider this rather diversegroup the “New Creative Community.”

Examining the Creative Community’s ImpactOK, if this so called “New Creative Community” isout there, do they have any real impact on thegraphic arts community? Let me submit the fol-lowing information for your deliberation. New Yorklabor statistics credit the design industry with morethan 175,000 design-related jobs, which accountsfor a combined payroll of $4.9 billion of which $900million is derived from firms of fewer than 20

people. And to add to that community there arealso approximately 18,000 design students in theNew York metropolitan area who come in under theradar and should also be considered as part of thecreative community.

Those are some very significant numbers, but thefigures that I feel have the greatest impact for all ofus in the graphic arts community are the followingfrom 2005: “92 percent of creatives specify, recom-mend, approve, or buy print,” and “$26 billion dol-lars of print is bought in the United States bycreatives annually.”

I’m sure for some folks those statistics could verywell be startling and maybe even sobering. With that

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said, I expect the “New Creative Community” notonly is a key role player in today’s print workflow, butalso will be even more of a force in the future.

Reviewing Key Industry MilestonesWhile those views and numbers are fresh in yourthoughts, let’s pause and observe those three sig-nificant milestones that I mentioned at the verystart of the article.

The Advent of SWOPIn my experience the first key milestone that had thegreatest impact was the advent of SWOP. I must admitthat I was an early “standards” believer way back inthe late 1970s when I was working at Young &Rubicam New York and first started to work as an adagency volunteer on SWOP specification. The conceptof SWOP was avant-garde at that time and not an easysell to everyone in the graphic arts community.

I had the good fortune to meet and work with JoelRubin (former owner of Phototype, Pennsauken,New Jersey) who was the driving force behind SWOP.He was patient enough to take the time to carefullyexplain to me why he viewed specifications to beimperative as the majority of the magazine printingindustry was moving to offset printing. Joel made astrong case for consistency from start to finish in the

print workflow and how it had the potential to solvea host of problems we faced in the magazine adreproduction area at that time. I will never forget onevery key fact that Joel touched on—how SWOP couldbe a major asset to ad agencies and their art direc-tors. One of SWOP’s goals would be to give the adagency the opportunity to create and produce an adthat would have predictable printing results in avariety of offset printed magazines, providing thateveryone in the workflow adhered to SWOP.

The fact that a printing specification was recog-nizing everyone in the process, including the origi-nator, was a groundbreaking concept for the time.When I started to speak to creatives about SWOP therewere plenty of skeptics right from the outset. After all,in many creatives’ view those printers and prepresspeople were their adversaries, always trying to curtailany possibility of achieving great color in their ads. Tosay it was an uphill sell is the understatement of thedecade. It took the collective graphic arts communityyears of numerous seminars, meetings, conferencesand even some one-on-one talks attempting to bringthe creatives into the fold. There were many creativeswho came with a very open mind and contributedgreatly while others came kicking and screaming. Butwe all persevered and, in retrospect, SWOP hasindeed had an enormous impact on everyoneinvolved in the process. It opened graphic arts pro-fessionals’ eyes—and I mean everyone in theprocess—to truly see and comprehend the total pic-ture from the very start to the delivered magazine.It emphasized that we are all stakeholders in theworkflow. That is a huge legacy for all of us todayand, in fact, I believe it is so important that I includethe history of SWOP as part of my curriculum for allof my Parsons students who are working toward adegree in design.

The Impact of Desktop PublishingFor the next milestone let’s fast forward to the begin-ning of desktop publishing in the late 1980s and takea look at what I perceive to be the second major effecton the creative community. You could also classifythis period as a paradigm shift for everyone in thegraphic arts workflow. At this juncture, creatives orcontent creators certainly felt empowered. As one ofmy creative director friends said, “For the first timewe were given the keys to the car!”

This period ushered in the age of digital tech-nology that gave creatives the capability to not only

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Copyright 2006 IDEAlliance. All rights reserved.Duplication of any portion hereof is prohibited with-out written permission of IDEAlliance.

From the beginning, industry leaders felt SWOP could be a major assetto ad agencies and art directors. SWOP paved the way for today’sstandards and specifications like the SWOP/GRACoL press form.

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create, but also to build a complete finished pagedigitally, place art work and photography, and setall of the type and then deliver that final page forprint—all directly from the desktop.

If you wanted to isolate one period in this era thatbecame the tipping point for creatives to recognizethat standards would take on an important role inthis new digital age, I suspect it would have to be thenecessity to set type at the same level of sophistica-tion that was achieved by professional typesetters.Creative people quickly recognized they were nowfaced with the new responsibilities of purchasing,building and maintaining a font library, ensuring thatnaming conventions for fonts were being adhered to,fonts were all licensed correctly and dealing with ahost of other important typographic issues thatneeded very close scrutiny and monitoring.

Yes, it was a whole new world for creatives and formany it was a steep learning curve, but along withtheir digital education came an awareness of what animportant role standards would now play in their pro-fessional lives. There was no turning back as thedesktop publishing was shifting into overdrive.

The Launch of AcrobatMoving ahead to the early 1990s, I see the thirdmajor effect to be the launch of Acrobat. It is thevehicle that accelerated the shift to a total digitalworkflow. I clearly remember sitting in an invitedmeeting for the introduction of Acrobat to the NewYork graphic arts industry. I was very impressed, butnot as much as my studio director who said to meafter we left the meeting, “Mark my words, what wejust saw in that meeting is going to change how weall work in the creative area. This will be bigger thanPostscript. Acrobat will be a boon for creatives inthe next 5 to 10 years.”

Admittedly this is paraphrasing because the exactwords have probably slipped from my memory in thelast 14 years, but the essence of what he said was righton the money. As PDF started to take hold in the late1990s, I became very aware that everyone in theentire print workflow from publishing, printing, pre-press, and production to finishing and, yes, creativewas considering using PDF as part of their workflow,as well as some creative professionals I know insmaller studio environments who rapidly imple-mented PDF as their workflow.

Then PDF/X became the standard for the printadvertising field replacing TIFF/IT P1, and other

variations of PDF started to populate other cornersof the print arena. I remember jumping on boardthe PDF bandwagon in 1999 and recommendedPDF to my agency heads as the format of choicefor our internal graphics workflow. I felt it couldeasily be used for our local internal workflow andalso aid us with national and international clientswho required a more flexible and faster approachto migrating ideas and ads especially in a newglobal economy. I believe at this stage the PDF jug-gernaut was moving faster than many of us wouldhave ever anticipated. And who was the drivingforce that helped accelerate this move to the newstandard of PDF? Creatives!

As a side note I would also like to add that duringthe early part of this decade at Parsons the NewSchool for Design we introduced PDF as part of ourproduction workflow for all of our design students inthe Communication Design & Technology Depart-ment. The students easily transitioned to moving filesto instructors and submitting work to printers fol-lowing simple guidelines that we established forthem. The switch to a total PDF workflow for ouraspiring creatives was incredibly easy and withoutquestion it collectively made their lives, as well as oursand the printers we employ, much easier.

As they say, the rest is now history. I strongly believe that the three milestones I just

outlined are the fundamental influences determiningwhy today’s “New Creative Community” and creativeprofessionals use standards without hesitation. Forcreatives, standards are another tool that works rightalongside the basic applications they use every dayto achieve the best possible printed result.

I hope this brief look into our past, combined witha critical look at our present, will help shape ourunderstanding of the “New Creative Community” andhow creatives will continue to assume a larger role inthe graphic arts of the future.

As PDF started to take hold in the late1990s, everyone in the print workflowfrom publishing, printing, prepress,and production to finishing and, yes,creative was considering using PDF.

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