InDesign Vs. StudioWorks
We use Balfour to publish our yearbook. The company offers a web based program for
designing and submitting pages for the yearbook. It’s called StudioWorks. The problem with StudioWorks is twofold. First, the program runs on Java and requires
constant updates which I cannot push through.
They have to be done with an IT password. The second issue is that if my students are
considering a journalism degree, the fact that they have spent four years in my
journalism classroom using StudioWorks will not mean a thing to anyone. Adobe, however, is an industry standard
product with a dense amount of bells and whistles. So many features, in fact, that you will not
likely master them all even with years of practice. So, you might be asking yourself, “Why not
switch to InDesign?” What’s the hold up,
Mandy? The hold up is that right now, I
have students who love yearbook and know StudioWorks really well. They are comfortable and efficient. They are terrified of the change. I don’t want to throw them into a tail spin
of terror by taking away something that is comfortable to them and is
working. Ultimately, I know the right
decision…it’s a no brainer. I’m just
really nervous about leaving what we know in exchange for what we don’t.
VS.
Mandy Stewart
Huntsville High School
Huntsville, Texas
mstewart01@huntsville-isd.org
Mandy - This might be a stupid question (and one you might not even see), but it's coming from someone who is taking on yearbook next year, and will definitely be sticking with InDesign rather than Herff's eDesign ... Can you do a few pages in InDesign and the rest of the book in StudioWorks? That's an honest question regardless of how stupid it sounds.
ReplyDeleteAnother option would be, if you have a beginning level class, is to teach them InDesign and then transition into using InDesign for the yearbook for the following year. Give your current staff a year's notice and perhaps, if there is downtime, give them an opportunity to learn InDesign. I totally agree with you that you will be doing your students a great service by giving them experience in industry-standard software.
Kris Urban
Corona del Sol High School
Tempe, Ariz.
Kris,
ReplyDeleteThis is part of my thought process. Yes, they can design the pages in InDesign and then save them as a JPEG or PNG and upload them to StudioWorks. It's just that when we do that, we lose the ability to "tag" photos in studio works and the index is more difficult. However, if we used balfour tools (which is a plug in for indesign), your can tag the photos for an index so it's either balfour tools or studioworks, but not both. Make sense?