Reymann : editorial platform & production with wide distribution

Understand the entire chain

Within the Reymann agency, Patrice Salib worked on the articulation of the profession, development and production. His journey around Rey’actif combines the collaborative platform with the tools that prepare the texts, visuals and pages.

The chain doesn't stop at the browser: it extends to databases, desktop applications, image engines, InDesign Server and production partners. It is this transversal vision that nourishes the Dtouch approach today.

Publishing and printing at millions of copies

Widely distributed catalogs and prospectuses combine data, version, calendar and manufacturing constraints. Patrice Salib's background covers publishing management and the preparation of rotogravure and rotary offset productions, on a scale of runs of several million copies.

This scale gives full meaning to the controls: a bad visual, an outdated text version or an unsuitable output parameter can have repercussions on a large production. The tools must make these elements identifiable before validation and departure to the printer.

The product and its image as a starting point

The texts and photo library must link to the right products and the right pages. The preparation states make visible the visuals available, missing, to be photographed or reworked. Imports and conditional fields link the repository to the expected document.

Experience includes circulation of originals, high definitions and previews, as well as clipping, transparency and reprocessing treatments. A correction must propagate in the derivatives and in the tools where they are used.

Period documents & interfaces

Interfaces of the Reymann editorial channel, in their period version. These archives illustrate the journey of Patrice Salib, founder of Dtouch, within the agency.

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A colorimetry integrated into production

Coordination with manufacturing, retouchers and printers covers image profiles and output conditions. A concrete case from 2016 concerns the establishment of a separate profile for the cover and the interior of a catalog.

The InDesign export scripts studied included profile, PDF preset, and definition settings. Correcting a profile could also require relaunching a page and following its new version in the validation circuit.

Planning at the heart of the editorial system

The planning of the production center brought together requests, internal teams and offshore shipments. Multiple tags, emergencies, available margin and alerts gave a view of the load. Collective reviews and the smoothing of departures accompanied the distribution of work.

The milestones could act in Rey’actif: end of editing, BAT enhancements and corrections triggered actions on the pages, including their unlocking. The planning thus participated in the behavior of the platform.

Dalim TWIST: link the settings to the folder

The redesign of production flows replaced around twenty historical flows with common flows for 4D and Rey’actif. REST scripts retrieved the production parameters of the file or media from Rey’actif.

This integration covered the management of ICC profiles and their display on the tests. It therefore brought together business data, engine automation and verification by the manufacturing teams.

InDesign Server and editorial platform

Rey-Active linked products, visuals and railways to composition services and documents. InDesign Server, ICML texts, templates and tracking tools of INDD and PDF were included in this circuit.

The teams could prepare, consult, annotate and validate the pages, while the engines carried out the generations and exports. Desktop applications and their connectors made it possible to extend work on production files.

Offshore teams linked to internal tools

Preparation of texts, templates, layers and images; distribution of folders; production of parallel versions; returns and BAT: remote work was part of a common schedule. A format adaptation could be tested on a page before being extended to the folder.

The image flows completed this management with assignment to service providers, sending queues, clipping returns and their reintegration. Activity reports by file and service provider also made it possible to reconcile production operations and invoicing.

The exchanges covered queuing for visuals, sending InDesign documents and returning working versions with file replication (byte replication). The transfer remained linked to the task and production control.

Printing, color separations and layer printing

From the platform, the proof request indicated the pages, the layers to be printed, the support and the printer. The service offered all layers, CMYK, CMY, black alone or spot colors, with the choice of tray depending on the support.

A single page could be requested in quadriform on A3 paper and in direct tone on A3 layer. The configuration, processing progress and generated files were to remain linked to this demand.

A service architecture to work together

The technical scope includes 4D bases then PostgreSQL environments, PIM, text and image indexing, task managers and PDF production services. Web and desktop applications are connected by connectors and events.

The task manager accepts immediate, deferred, or scheduled requests with priorities and concurrent execution limits. Monitoring tools provide access to processing and logs. Their consistency is necessary to move from a user request to an actually available page or image.

A useful experience to take over a complex system

These projects confronted the teams with very concrete situations: inconsistency between database and files, locking of a recording, image return before its file, clipping not applied or preview to be reconstructed.

The contribution of this course is an ability to link the symptoms to the complete process, to dialogue with specialists in the field and developers, then to organize an evolution which remains usable in production.

The engineering behind the interfaces

The scope includes very concrete work on formats and exploitation: reading 8BIM plots in JPEGs, recovering annotations and attachments from Aproove PDFs, repairing missing images and attaching InDesign documents to media.

The treatments are supplemented by notifications, night checks, logs and recovery possibilities. The experience thus focuses on what the teams see in the platform and on the mechanisms that make this information reliable throughout production.

Transmit Color Knowledge

The course also includes ICC trainer experience, with a one-day professional session hosted on site in 2014. The program covered profiles, printing processes, screen calibration, RGB and CMYK, the Adobe suite and Acrobat.

This dimension of transmission completes project management: the settings, instructions and tools must be understood by the teams who implement them.

Different brands and production rules

Ludendo / La Grande Récré and Starjouet, Cora, Norma, Supermarchés Match, Mr. Bricolage, Migros and E.Leclerc Portugal provide concrete contexts for this experience. The interventions varied depending on the files: variations, fields and exports, web tools, photo libraries, customer corrections or offshore coordination.

These interventions were carried out with agency teams, business contacts and development and production partners.

Migros France: images, catalogs and typographies

Migros France productions combined product images, catalog pages, the platform and the typographies necessary for the layout. Customer teams used these resources for their commercial operations, including toy catalogs.

The technical interventions focused on the availability of visuals, links in documents, consultation of the platform and the fonts to use. The integration had to preserve consistency between resources, pages and versions adapted to the brand.