Re: DTP business inquiries

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: Debra: : I agree with much of what John told you. I left the corporate rat race 5 yrs. ago and relocated to the Mohave desert area. Location plays a big part with how slowly and/or quickly your business grows. I started my business 2 yrs ago and have held my own. I have a very good referral rate fr om other sources such as: a couple of print shops, an ad specialty company, a local art gallery and the local office supply store. : Referrals in this business are a god send. Build good a good relationship with them, it works, You might do as I did when I started. I paid a visit with some samples of my work. I told them that I did not want theire large run items, but if approached by anyone wanting under 500 copies or ust needed layout work to please contact me. I have become know with the local real estate companies because of my custom invitations. : Another point for you to consider is your market. : I found that in my location niche marketing worked the best. I checked out what others were doing in town and offered what they didn't. It worked. I didn't limit myself to just a few task, but rather anything went- photographic restoration, standard DTP materials, custom one-of-a-kind materials, scanning services, you name it I did it. Just don't promise something you don't know how to do. I also advertised a more personalized one-on-one customer service from concept to completion. I held their hand all of the way thru. Today, many of my customers have become friend also. More referral business from another source. : In closing: check out your home town first, decide on what your initial market will be and grow from there. This will be my third year and my work load is such that I'm entertaining the thought of starting a design studio with two other women. : : : : : John: : : : : I found the info you gave Julia helpful as I also plan to work part time from my home in the hopes of building a client base large enough for full time. So, I am wondering, with this beginning on a part-time basis, what equipment, software, hardware, training, etc. you have found to be necessary. Also, what has been your best source for your projects you have landed. : : : : Did you take a course or are you self-taught? I did some light desktop publishing a couple of years ago (self-taught) and have been away from it for a while but feel like with the proper manuals and time I can adequately train myself. Is this an accurate assessment in your opinion? : : : : I agree that the bulletin boards are wonderful sources of info. I have gained much more from them than direct one-on-one contact. Thanks for your info. : : : : Debra : : : ________ : : : Debra, : : : Equipment: : : : I use a PowerMac 7600 @ 156MHz, w/48MBs RAM and 3Gigs of hard drive(s). It includes a CD-ROM drive. I have an NEC 5FGe 17" color monitor (the bigger-the better). I have an old dinosaur Apple OneScanner (256 levels of gray at 300dpi, higher with software interpolation) that happens to be just fine for most of the scanning I do. I truly haven't had the need for a color scanner, as the artwork I've used in the past has been off of CD-ROM or otherwise provided. I use the SCSI version of the Iomege Zip 100 drive for archival and HD backup purposes. A 600 dpi Postscript. laser printer is a nice thing to have (I do--the HP LaserJet 4M). I've done without a color printer, but I've been tempted to get a color inkjet for a while now. : : : Equipment comment: : : : Many people still look at the Mac as an expensive box for graphic snobs. These people are usually PC users, and I find that they are wrong on both points. The Mac has been found to cost less in the long run-all things considered (by a PC oriented publication) than comparable PCs, when speaking of an office-use environment. However, their argument that having a Mac is no longer necessary to perform DTP and pre-press magic has begun to hold water. Don't automatically assume that you have to get a Mac to do this stuff. There--I said it. BUT--The Mac still holds on to the crown as leader in the field. I've read many posts by service bureau workers that they much prefer to work with Mac created files than those provided by PC users, but that there are more and more service bureaus that have PCs so that they can accept work from them. So if you have the PC, you don't have to dump it for the Mac. : : : Software: : : : Quark XPress and Adobe PageMaker are the "big two" for layout tools. Quark, as I understand it, is still leading as far as usership goes (it's what I use too), but because they haven't put out a major (or minor, for that matter) update to their software package in a couple years, they are losing precious ground to PageMaker. The Quark/PageMaker issue is much like the Mac/PC issue. They each have their loyal following. I began with Publish It! on the Apple ][GS, graduated to Publish It! Easy on the Mac, then moved to PageMaker for a couple of years, and since August of '95, it's been Quark XPress. I've not had a look at PageMaker for a couple of years, so I cannot give a fair comparison comment, as PageMaker has come through with TWO major updates to Quark's NONE. I still like Quark a lot, but they need to get the lead out of their pants but quick, if they're going to hold on to any lead that they MAY still have. : : : Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand are both very capable art creation tools, the more popular being Illustrator. I have and use Illustrator. Adobe PhotoShop is THE tool for working with artwork of all kinds. It is safe to say that there are many times more USERS of PhotoShop than there are Masters of PhotoShop. Many/most use PhotoShop or PhotoShop LE as their scanning software. A very full-featured application! : : : Most of the help wanted ads in the graphic field list knowledge of Quark XPress, Illustrator and PhotoShop as essential for employment. There are more graphic oriented applications available, but if you have these three, you're on the right track. : : : Additional essentials for software include: a word processor (I'm still using MS Word v5 and MacWrite II v1), ATM (Adobe Type Manager) on the Mac so that your postscript fonts look good onscreen at any size; a font utility like Suitcase, MasterJuggler or ATM Deluxe (though I've heard some not-too-good stuff about ATM Deluxe) for opening/closing/managing font sets by application or document (so that you don't have to have ALL of your fonts in your Fonts folder to have them available to work with [limit used to be 128--maybe still is]); and Fonts--a nice variety is good, and you can never have too many. You want to be able to do the flyer for the kid's birthday party and the newspaper ad for the local dentist too. : : : Training/Experience: : : : I have taken only one course, and it was a one-week "summer intensive" workshop at an art and design college titled: "Prepress-From Mac to Print". I honestly didn't learn too much, but it was a lot of fun meeting with these people that were interested in the same stuff I was. Being an at-home DTPer, you don't get to see or talk much with those in the same field. We have to rely on this Cyber-community a lot of the time to exchange our thoughts and information. I also took in about ten hours of "seminar" type classes (one hour blocks) over a two day computer convention that came to town. These had to do with "tips and tricks" of the popular graphic programs. : : : I am therefore pretty much self-taught. In the beginning I looked at every ad in every magazine and newspaper I could get my hands on. I looked at these in a "nuts & bolts" sort of manner, seeing how the ad was constructed (Could I have done this one? Yes!). I looked for ways that the ads would grab (or not) and hold your attention. I would decide whether I liked the way the ad was done or not. Looked at the way certain elements were used to make your eye flow through the content. Noticing the use of different fonts in the layouts. I read a book on fonts and font usage (don't recall just which one though). I learned how type can be formal or informal. The difference in serif and non-serif fonts and why one is easier to read than the other in blocks of text. : : : Manuals, when well-written can be fun and helpful. Others can be very dull (like most that come with the software). I found a set of training videos for Quark XPress that were so informative, but at the same time so very boring that they literally put me to sleep. These are best taken in small bites, but do consider renting them if you want to get a full-spectrum view of all of the capabilities of a particular software package. They use a sample project to show you ALL of the features of the program. Little tips and tricks like keyboard shortcuts, that you may have never learned by leafing through the manual. : : : Self-taught worked for me, but at the moment, I don't have any steady work. As with many fields, word of mouth is the best source of advertising you can have for DTP. I fell into a wonderful arrangment with a former next-door neighbor that has 26 years experience in advertising, and used me for a while for all of his print work in his "communications consultant" business. He is a mini ad agency. He had three or four very good clients that I was doing a variety of stuff for. No face-to-face contact, just phone conversations and faxes. I billed his clients directly for the DTP and was pretty much paid on time. My ads were showing up in the big and small newspapers and one was even on the back cover of the phone book. Fun stuff! I did some work for a "printing broker" for a year or so. This too, was a nice arrangement with a variety of projects. : : : I've recently done a search on the Internet with a phone directory site that gave me a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of all of the print shops in my town and six surrounding communities. I saved these as text and imported them into a FileMaker Pro database and did a mailing to each of the 57 entries I had found. I mailed a one page "letter of introduction", a one-page sample of three ads I'd done and my business card to each of these print shops. I've read/heard that getting a 1 or 2% response from a mailing of this sort is average, and I ended up with two calls to me that were interested. Important: If you do this sort of mailing, DO follow up with a phone call! Plan for rejection, but do call. I found that about half were a solid "NO, we do all of our stuff in-house". Most of the other half said that they were keeping my information on file, and would call me if/when they needed me. It's so easy to NOT follow up the mailing with a call, but if I hadn't, I'd only have ONE of the two that called me as a likely prospect. I have three to five good/fair prospects for a working arrangement. I feel good about it. : : : While long-winded, this is of course not a comprehensive look at all that matters in DTP, but I addressed your questions as best as I could. If anyone else out there has any of their own experiences or information or commentary on these items, please chime in. : : : John Larson : : : Mpls/St Paul MN : : : : You have provided me with some wonderful information. I am also just getting started in DTP from my home. Do you have any wise insights on pitfalls of the business? Thank you for your assistance. Cherie

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