long story short, our office is moving to a new building and IT is trying to get us working primarily on Google Drive (yes we've been around and around on why and how crazy it is, but its happening) instead of our server.

We make magazines so the whole operation is done in InDesign + InCopy. If you don't know, in InDesign when you open a document, the app also makes a file that locks others out so you don't get two people working on the same file, and it also triggers document recovery if the app crashes. Because its part of the auto-save/recovery, the file never actually stops writing so cloud services CANNOT copy the lock file over. In practice, that means when the app crashes, everything disappears, regardless of whether you saved, and sometimes BECAUSE you saved.

This is an incredible deal, and its only a matter of time before we lose a lot of time and money over a whole issue disappearing on press day, or the wrong files getting sent to the printer. Printing the wrong ad is thousands of dollars lost and risks a client. It wouldn't be that bad since another user can see the lock file and know not to open it, but the inevitable app crash clapping a whole document is kinda scary.

But ain't nobody trying to hear it from the art department.

here the big C (cloud) word is like, the worst thing you could ever say

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Son even told them it was MORE secure than a private server. Puttin it all on 2-factor to save us.

they are security crazy here too. Dropbox is much better but apparently not as secure.

Also InDesign is the devil. As someone who only does screen design, any time Ive had to open that I wanted to throw my computer out the window.

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>they are security crazy here too. Dropbox is much better but
>apparently not as secure.
>
>Also InDesign is the devil. As someone who only does screen
>design, any time Ive had to open that I wanted to throw my
>computer out the window.


I mean, nothing and I mean nothing does what it does as well at what Indesign does. Sure, I could do all sorts of workarounds but when it comes to putting a deck together or obsessing over a print document Indesign is king. Outside of that I want to never ever have to think about it and the mere thought of having to open it makes me somewhat irrationally upset.


hold up...didju just say you do screen design in indesign? Why tho?

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https://soundcloud.com/swageyph/yph-die-with-me

I don't understand it and I hate the colors and the printers and the InDesigning. So the few times I've had to do the odd print design task and use InDesign I'm miserable.

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The cloud can be done securely (especially if you leverage a cloud access security broker - casb ).

The days of on premise services is going the way of the dinosaur.

I mean, I wouldn't use the free version of drive for work, but there is nothing wrong with using the business version of the G Suite apps. In addition, there may be some regs / laws that prohibit what type of information you can store in the cloud without more controls in place or without using a more secure version of the cloud service (like an AWS GovCloud).

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A bad Samaritan averaging above average men (c) DOOM

sharepoint 2013 mang.

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Is it just easier that way for visual work?

In development we have to use version control (git) or everyone would be clobbering each other's work constantly.

so the magazine is broken up into ads and editorial. For this scenario, lets just say one person does ads, and one does editorial. We get a layout of where all the pages and ads need to go in an issue. The editorial designer creates all the documents for each story which will house not only their design and copy from writers, but the ad person will also need to get into that file to place ads where they go. Ads and editorial are approved separately (ads by the client that bought it, editorial by the editor). When both are finished and approved on a page, that page is exported to PDF for the printer.

Without the lock file, some possible problems might occur if they both have it open (which we've had happen):

-one finishes after the other and saves over their work
-two lock files show up, confusing indesign, killing the app and taking the document with it, possibly leading to a reinstall
-incopy stories unlinking, requiring a copy-editor to do all the work over again from memory
-ad files unlinking
-a previously approved and placed ad may wind up needing a change, which will be made and updated, but somewhere along the line, the document reverts to a previous save and the edit designer will have no way of knowing the difference because they didn't do the ad. Client is pissed. -$1500.

Thats not even getting into the ads themselves. We use a system similar to salesforce that doubles as an accounting tool. The salesperson puts in the production order with instructions for a new ad, the file name for an old ad, or a new ad created by the client. Its first come, first serve, so whichever one of us doing ads gets to it first will put our name by it and begin work.

Since it doesn't auto-refresh, a somewhat common situation might be that two people have the window open and simultaneously put their names by something. One will go to get the file, but see that someone else beat them to it because they cant get into the indd file then notice the lock file. The risk of saving over somebody else's work is much higher.

Some ads will have cross-server elements, like if a client wants to use an image they used in an ad for one publication in an ad for another one of our publications, Drive won't be able to actually see the link until its manually linked. Not as big of a deal, but definitely a time waster.

Nobody online seems to have come up with an answer, so its really up to Adobe adding more cloud functionality which likely won't come before i leave this job.

Yikes that is crazy. Thanks for the picture that's even wilder than I was thinking. It makes sense that you'd need to see ads/editorial in the same file to make sure everything looks ok visually.

Working at my previous job my biggest gripe was that design would send us mockups with copy that was "finalized" but they'd keep tweaking everything (copy + UI) endlessly. So we finally had to ask the designer to export PNGs as a way of handing the work off for good and not being able to tweak after that. I can see how your situation involving multiple stakeholders can get messy with iterations..

For a dev working with code (text) it's way easier to track changes. You work on version X of the code while your co-worker works on version Y, then you merge X+Y into the master copy. We still have those clobber scenarios but they're rare and more of an annoyance than an emergency.

Your situation sounds like it's waiting for a killer-app for design version / collaboration. I'm kinda curious if Zeplin / Invision / etc solve any of those problems but I honestly haven't used them past logging in, downloading mockups, and closing the tab lol

since the writers only use either Word or Docs and inCopy. None of them actually have to worry about inDesign. It just becomes problematic when more than one designer needs the file.

One of our publications basically has up to 3 designers running up in it depending on the month if we have special sections. so thats one person doing editorial, maybe two doing separate special advert sections, plus the ad person placing ads in all 3. Considering we're moving to a new office that has us more fragmented (a whole other post), quick communication becomes much more difficult.

Its lame because Photoshop and Illustrator seem to force your file into Read-Only mode if they detect two instances, but i guess when they made InDesign, they figured the lock file was foolproof. They weren't prepared for people to work in the cloud when they designed it and i'm assuming they'd have to rewrite most of indesign to fix it.

We had a 3 person UX/UI design team. I was the only person with any front-end dev and app design experience so I had to maintain and update both the master client-facing InVision prototype that ended up having 200+ screens and also run the Zeplin stuff for the dev teams (for web, iOS, and Android) and BA's.

Three designers working on their own assignments in separate Sketch files. Once we got client approval for screens/sections, I had to add everything to a master Sketch file, then upload to Zeplin and wire the shit up to the master InVision prototype. In addition to having my own screens to design, I had to do ALL of that.

That was a pain but if everyone did their shit right, it's probably the best way I can think of at this point. Problems arise when one of the designers doesn't care about tech limits/requirements and which APIs we're using and just makes shit up, THEN having to redo everything in compliance with what's actually possible is the worst part.

I could show y'all some of the design work of a person getting paid over 100k (albeit in NYC) and you would laugh out loud.

I really hope "studio" streamlines the invision wire-working prototype workflow - I too also move from Sketch to InVision (using Craft) however shit gets cumbersome really quick especially with moving/interactive prototypes


werd.

I prefer it that way. The front end dev creates web pages from the InDesign/PS/AI file, and I'll only get html/css/js from then. I could completely delete Adobe from my work machine and be fine if I ever got around to learning GIMP.

Sounds like the crap I had to deal with when using a WebDAV system. Lead developer would check out files, not check them in and them be passive-aggressive about it. Yeah, bro... I didn't update that file because YOU HAD IT CHECKED OUT, and took 2 days to release it to the server. I refuse to work like that anymore. I use git now.

I use it for tracking non-code text stuff as well. Version control is my shit