Visuals have better recall rates!
Nowadays any content without visuals is becoming from the past. Visualized content is getting more appeal,encouraging people to interact with it. According to PR Daily, visual content gets viewed 94% times more than content without visuals.
So if your business relies on online or offline content, or if you are a designer and thinking of working on a DTP project, we recommend that you read our guide to get some tips and hints about working on DTP documents.
Let’s Start!
Multilingual Desktop Publishing Tips for Designers
There are many areas that designers should consider while designing multilingual DTP materials. Let’s review them one by one:
- Most Common Software Programs Used for Multilingual Desktop Publishing
Choosing the Right Page Layout Application
- Things You Should Consider While Working on Multilingual DTP Documents
- Top Challenges for Experienced Multilingual DTP Experts
1- Most Common Software Programs Used for Multilingual Desktop Publishing
There are many software programs that are available in the market, such as:
- Adobe InDesign
- Quark XPress
- Scribus
- Adobe Illustrator
- PageMaker
- FlipHTML5
- Microsoft Publisher
The selection of the appropriate software to use is based on the layout of the document you are working on.
2- Choosing the Right Page Layout Application
Not all software programs are compatible with all documents. For large documents like manuals that have tables of contents, indexes and multiple chapters, it’s much better to use Adobe FrameMaker or Microsoft Word
While small documents that contain between one to twelve pages, like brochures and data sheets, it’s preferable to use QuarkXpress, Adobe PageMaker or Adobe InDesign.
3- Things You Should Consider While Working on Multilingual DTP Documents
Fonts: You should ask for the fonts that clients want to use for multilingual DTP documents. Sometimes, clients don’t provide the fonts for some languages. In this case, you should match the foreign language font with the Roman fonts as close as possible.
Text box sizes: Some languages expand or shrink after translation, so you should consider this while designing the box sizes.
Text point sizes: To fit into the available space.
Line spacing: ou should use either double or single line space and nothing in between.
Text styles: To use the existing one or create a new style for each language.
4- Top Challenges for Experienced Multilingual DTP Experts
- Working within fast turnarounds
- Localizing graphics
- Cultural Background
Multilingual Desktop Publishing Tips for Customer
From a customer perspective, you should know essential tips before deciding to start a DTP project, such as:
- Materials Require Multilingual Desktop Publishing
- Inhouse or Outsource?
- How DTP Companies Charge?
- How to Choose the Right Service Provider for Your DTP Project?
1- Materials Require Multilingual Desktop Publishing
Any offline or online materials can be produced in multilingual desktop publishing. As long as your documents have text and images, they’re likely to be graphic design files
- Brochures
- Books
- Ebooks
- Posters
- Menus
- Technical Manuals
- Marketing Materials
- E-learning materials
- Retail Packaging
2- Inhouse or Outsource?
This is a real dilemma! To hire an in-house DTP designer or outsource the project to another company. Being in the industry for a quite long time, let me explain the two concepts for you.
On the one hand, to hire an in-house DTP designer will give you a full control of the project but will add a cost of operation. Plus the productivity and the final result will not be as you are expecting. As it won’t be possible to hire a whole team if you don’t have a constant need for DTP projects, and you will need to hire one or two who might not have experience in working on all DTP documents or the software used.
On the other hand, partnering with a DTP service provider will make available to you a fully dedicated team with multiple skills and experience in all types of DTP materials. Besides, it should have a quality process that ensures that they will produce the best results.
3- How Do Companies Charge for DTP Services?
DTP rates are not like translation and can’t be determined per word, page or hour. As the final product might be a single page that needs hours of work or a huge document comprising thousands of pages. So there are too many variations in work based on the number of pages, its complexity and the types of designs required.
That’s why it’s hard to have an average or typical rate for DTP services. You just need to provide your DTP partner with a sample of your project to be able to decide how much time and effort needed to work on this project.
4- How to Choose the Right Service Provider for Your DTP Project?
With thousands of companies that are available in the market, it might be hard for you to choose your DTP partner. Our advice is to take care of the below criteria while choosing;
- Specialty – You need to make sure that they’re specialized in your project and the types of designs you want.
- Quality – Make sure about their quality assurance process and you can ask about the skills and qualifications of their design team.
- Turnaround time – Agree from the start on a specific and strict deadline to receive the first draft of your project to avoid any delay especially if you need these documents for attending events or publishing at a specific time.
- Feedback – Ask for clients’ referrals for your DTP partner to validate their experience and the quality of their projects.
Proud to say that Contentech has been over the past 20 years,one of the best multilingual DTP service providers . Our uniqueness, however, comes from:
- 17100 ISO-certified technical & language service provider.
- Multilingual DTP team of more than 30 of graphic artists, illustrators, designers, and account managers. Our team is capable of offering DTP services in more than 120 languages.
- Customized work plans based upon your business objectives.
We would be delighted to quote any of your translation, localization or DTP projects.
Just:
- E-mail us the details at: info@contentech.com
- Contact us on: +202 3762-5037
