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robschneider![Offline]( "Offline")  Contributing editor Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Total posts: 211 Location: Dallas Morning News Age: 36 Gender: Male
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 9:07 am |
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John is absolutely on to something.
And while this is a laughable Web site, someone much smarter and much more sophisticated selling hundreds or thousands of customized templates isn't that far away. While this is several steps removed, this isn't that unlike the redesign promotional material all of our editors receive in the fact that it defines newspaper design as a "formula" that can be figured out and will net you more circulation.
If there's one thing I've learned a year into my job, it's that the concept of quality is not a quantifiable term that can put into a financial model. You can do all of the benchmarking you want, but you simply can't define quality in financial terms. And in the quest to become more and more efficient, at some point, chucking quality and having part time employees work off of templates will become much more realistic of an option in terms of hitting the bottom line.
ps - Am I understanding that setting up 15 basic templates is somehow worth $10,000-15,000? Where can I sign up for that work?
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Mark A. Dodge Medlin![Offline]( "Offline")  Maestro Joined: 18 Dec 2004 Total posts: 325 Location: San Diego Union-Tribune Age: 47 Gender: Male
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 4:13 pm |
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It's all the yellow highlighting that makes the guy's Web site art. Beyond that, my favorite part:
| Quote: | | Learn the secrets that Designers want to keep to themselves, stop giving them your hard-earned money and start making money with your professional Newspaper Layout Templates today! You don't have to be a designer to do this, I've done the hard work for you! |
Then he starts his detailed pitch with this salutation:
| Quote: | | Dear Newspaper designer, |
In other words:
| Quote: | | Dear Person who I've just insulted with a broad-brush assertion about people in your profession, |
Classy.
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Adrián Alvarez![Offline]( "Offline")  Action Figure Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Total posts: 27 Location: San Antonio, TX Age: 36 Gender: Male
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:57 am |
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The hard reality is that some newspapers are working right now on this way, with templates pages... and here in U.S.!
3 years ago, when I came from Monterrey, MX. to San Antonio, TX. to start Rumbo, a small chain of spanish tabloid newspapers —now weeklies— in Texas, I learned to use "Milenium" a pagination and production tool something similar than CCI.
One of the "wonderful features" of this software —and a key element when this company tried to sell it to us— is than you can create a layout database with hundreds of layouts, printing them for the editors as a book reference (as inside layout 1, inside layout 2, etc.) and save a lot of time working with templates and giving more time for those pages that really need a creative process.
On that time we created not only a database for the insides, we developed also around 30 layouts for the covers and even for the frontpage!
But again, only to take the advantage of that time and invest it better developing visual concepts for other complex pages or the frontpage.
The developers of this technological tool is Protec, a company from Spain: http://www.protecmedia.com/es/
They are the leaders on the newspaper industry on Spain (the wonderful Marca is designed with this tool), but also have clients in other 15 countries.
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Mike Braun![Offline]( "Offline") Contributing editor Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Total posts: 185 Location: Fort Myers News-Press Age: 53 Gender: Male
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 9:45 am |
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FREE BONUS GIFT 1
Media kit templates for your ad reps or sales team
FREE BONUS GIFT 2
Photoshop actions (scripts) for automatically formatting images for print,
and tutorials describing this process
FREE BONUS GIFT 3
Microsoft Word document templates for story creation
FREE BONUS GIFT 4
Forms and checklists for story creation
This Incredible Information is Yours
in Less Than Five Minutes
BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE
GEEZ, THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE LATE NIGHT RONCO COMMERCIALS. IT "MIGHT" ATTRACT SOMEONE, BUT NOT MANY. NOW, IF THEY SHARPEN IT UP, MAKE IT A LITTLE LESS CRASS, CAN THE STILTED LANGUAGE AND TONE, THEN THEY MAY HAVE SOMETHING.
BUT SERIOUSLY, HOW MANY START-UP NEWSPAPERS ARE THERE OUT THERE LOOKING FOR TEMPLATES? DON'T MOST OF US ALREADY HAVE THEM AND DON'T WE JUST REJIGGER THEM WHEN WE CHANGE THINGS? THIS MAY HAVE BEEN A GOOD DEAL 5-10 YEARS AGO, BUT I THINK THEY MAY BE A BIT LATE WITH THEIR OFFER. I MAY BE WRONG, BUT I DON'T THINK THIS IS GONNA MAKE IT BIG.
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Mike Braun![Offline]( "Offline") Contributing editor Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Total posts: 185 Location: Fort Myers News-Press Age: 53 Gender: Male
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charles apple![Offline]( "Offline")  Superhero Joined: 09 Mar 2004 Total posts: 3721 Location: Norfolk, Virginia Age: 46 Gender: Male
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John V. Smith![Offline]( "Offline")  Juke Box Hero Joined: 27 Sep 2004 Total posts: 32 Location: Rocky Point, NY (Long Island) Age: 31 Gender: Male
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Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:07 pm |
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My favorite part is that there's the "Area Man" photo of the guy who describes himself as a guru since he's worked in newspapers for seven years.
All hail, Guru Smith! Send me your money and I'll give you the privilege of owning some template that took me five minutes to put together.
product: 10 templates that will change your life
site: http://www.designguru.com
cost: one BILLION dollars
Guru out!
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billywachs![Offline]( "Offline") Juke Box Hero Joined: 26 Mar 2004 Total posts: 30 Location: Baltimore, MD Age: 38 Gender: Male
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Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2007 7:12 pm |
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I think these are different places. McBee wouldn't jump ship for a company like that.
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