Westchester Publishing Services

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Westchester Wrap-up: Summer 2019

Design Services

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing & Conference Manager

In the summer months, the pace typically slows down, allowing an opportunity to relax and enjoy the longer, warmer days summertime offers up. While all of us at Westchester made sure to take some time to spend with friends and family, we were still working hard to make sure all of our publishers’ projects were moving along through the pre-press stages. Here’s a quick wrap-up of what we did this past summer:

Collaborative partnership

Dropbox is one of the members of Westchester’s Partner Network, and their Dropbox Business suite of products helps us to remain connected internally as well as with our freelance resources and client publishers to flow project assets to each other within a secure framework. Check out this video that Dropbox produced over the summer that shows how Dropbox applications help support Westchester’s development initiatives, including our Client Portal.

Westchester profiled in Publishers Weekly

In early August, Westchester Publishing Services was featured in the Publishers Weekly annual Digital Solutions in India issue. In the article, Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler M. Carey, explains how the company is prepared for continued growth during the next decade, and reflects on the significant milestone of 50 years of serving publishers’ pre-press requirements, along with reaching the fifth anniversary of being a 100% employee-owned company.

Meet Dilip Chacko

Shortly before the Digital Solutions in India article was published, I had the opportunity to speak at length with Dilip Chacko, Founder and Managing Director of our wholly-owned composition facility in Chennai, India. It was an extremely informative discussion encompassing Dilip’s career, his guiding principles, and how his focus on providing high quality applies to client projects as well as the employees who work on them.

Client Portal Update

In the spring edition of the Westchester Wrap-up, we shared how the Client Portal had been shortlisted for the Stationers’ Company Innovation in Excellence Award. Not content to rest on our laurels (or nominations), we are continually adding capabilities to the Client Portal to better serve the requirements our clients have. Last month, we conducted a webinar demonstrating several of the helpful features that make publisher workflows more efficient throughout the pre-press production process.

UK conferences

While July and August are quieter months from a working standpoint, the pace tends to move faster with September’s arrival. Tim Davies, Managing Director of Westchester Publishing Services UK, was particularly busy last month meeting with publishing industry professionals at the ALPSP (The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) Conference, and the IPG (Independent Publishers Guild) Autumn Conference. Prior to those conferences, Tim shared some helpful insights for independent publishers in this IPG podcast.

Next Generation Science Standards

If you haven’t been in the classroom for a decade or more, you might be surprised at how much more proficient students are required to be when it comes to understanding scientific concepts. Our STEM Content Director, Dave Bailis, explains how a more effective science curriculum is being implemented around the country to help prepare students for a world that is more reliant on science and technology than in previous generations.

In the Community

Earlier this year, our Westchester K-12 division implemented a program where each month one member of the team selects a project to fund from the thousands that are submitted to DonorsChoose.org by public school teachers. These projects are often for schools where the majority of students are from low-income communities that aren’t able to access much-needed classroom resources through traditional funding avenues. During the summer, STEM Content Director, Dave Bailis, and Director of Creative Services, Mark DaGrossa, each had the opportunity to fulfill a teacher request that was meaningful to them.

Meet with us this fall (and beyond)!

We’re attending and exhibiting at several conferences during the next few months, including Frankfurt Book Fair next week, FutureBook in London this November, and the SIIA Education Business Forum taking place this December in New York City. If you will be attending any of these events, let’s catch up! Make an appointment to connect with us, and be sure to visit our Conferences and Events page where we will be regularly adding information about the conferences Westchester will be attending or exhibiting at in 2020.

You don’t need to wait for a conference to speak with our knowledgeable staff about how our fifty years of experience in providing editorial, composition, and design services can help you produce quality publications while condensing schedules and trimming pre-press expenses. Contact us today to learn how Westchester’s consultative approach can benefit your projects.

 

by Tyler M. Carey, Chief Revenue Officer

Why do policy groups partner with US employee-owned Westchester Publishing Services on their books and white papers?  We provide a wider breadth of offerings than most individual editorial and design freelancers – or even competing vendors – are capable of.

One of the trickier aspects of any policy or analysis publication can be data visualization.  Get it right and your book or paper really stands out, delivering meaningful content visually and with impact. Get it wrong and you’ve got a mess on your hands that looks like a PowerPoint done by a high school student.

To really get data visualization right in the first place is often quite expensive – and something that requires having the right resource available to start work as soon as your publication is set to go to design, and in turn publication.  Many policy publications are time sensitive, making this approach a risky gamble from scheduling and cost perspectives. This is where Westchester can help.

We are a US employee-owned company with US-based designers, offshore typesetters that span 3 shifts, and hundreds of staff and freelancers ready to go at a moment’s notice.  If you have a publication that is time sensitive but also requires high impact visuals, we are your most affordable and reliable option.  In many instances, the policy publications we work on are embargoed or at the very least fall under copyright, so it would be improper of us to share examples of our work.  This past year, though, we worked on an open access title with Brookings Institution Press – the CEQ Handbook – which, as it is open access, is available to be viewed online.  This link brings you to the CEQ Institute’s page, where you can view sections of the publication online at no cost.  For publishers that handle economics content, or any other type of content that needs to be presented with high-quality data viz, it’s worth flipping through the PDF to see the great work that Brookings and its author, Nora Lustig, did on the title.  We were pleased to be selected by Brookings to provide the editorial and production services that resulted in the final printer and online files.

I also encourage you to visit our services page to learn about the complete array of high-quality, reliable pre-press services we provide for policy groups, think tanks, and foundations. Rely on Westchester – we have the expertise your projects require, whenever you need it.

 

by Nicole Tomassi, Marketing and Conference Manager

Maybe it sped by due to how busy we are here at Westchester, but spring has bloomed into summer. Join me for a quick rewind of some of the key events that occurred during the months of April, May, and June at Westchester Publishing Services:

London Book Fair 2018, and Guildhall

Several members of our management team were in attendance at the 47th Annual London Book Fair in April. The Book Fair provided us with the opportunity to affirm our business growth in the UK, formally launching Westchester Publishing Services UK, with Managing Director, Tim Davies. It was a productive event for us, and our preparations are already underway to return next March.

While in London, our Chief Revenue Officer, Tyler M. Carey was bestowed the prestigious honor of the Freedom of the City of London by the Stationers’ Guild. A unique benefit granted by this recognition is that he can now legally drive a flock of sheep across London Bridge. If you don’t believe me, you can read more about it in this blog post.

An alphabet soup of conferences

In addition to London Book Fair, Westchester staff attended several conferences and trade shows this spring throughout the U.S., including NCTM(National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), CSE (Council of Science Editors), SSP (Society for Scholarly Publishing), BEA (BookExpo),  SIIA(Software and Information Industry Association), AUP (Association of University Presses), and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). We catch our breath in July and August but as you’ll see from our Conferences page, the pace picks up again in September with Publishers Weekly StarWatch, IPG Autumn Conference, and The Bookseller Children’s Conference.

Publishers Weekly Whitepaper, and Dropbox Partnership

Westchester sponsored production on a whitepaper that was published and distributed by Publishers Weekly in April, with in-depth analysis about how publishers of various sizes and types are able to effectively scale their programs through the use of prepress vendors. Following on this successful venture, Dropbox shared news last month about the work they do with companies in the media and entertainment vertical, including publishers and vendors. We also had an informative Q&A session with George Baier IV, from Dropbox, which provided a useful perspective on this topic.

Westchester continues to grow

By providing quality products and services to our valued clients, our business has grown and flourished over the past several years. To further ensure accounts continue to receive the high level of support we pride ourselves on, we recently welcomed Keri Goldberg to our sales and marketing team in the role of Business Development Manager. Current and prospective clients alike will find Keri’s background in publishing to be helpful as they consider prepress solutions for their particular needs. Westchester is also looking for editorial and production talent as various areas of the company expand, visit our Careers page for more information.

Westchester K-12 Summit

Our K-12 Services team held their annual summit at their Dayton, Ohio headquarters to strategize on how to build on the successes of the past year to achieve continued forward momentum. Having the entire team – who are located throughout the country – come together in one location was beneficial for all involved. It gave our staff an opportunity to discuss the student books, teacher’s guides, assessments, leveled readers, and other projects that the teams have been working on. It also allowed them to explore the expanded capacity and additional service offerings they are now able to provide clients as a result of hiring additional staff earlier in the year.

Summer Reading

Reading isn’t a seasonal pastime, but it seems especially enjoyable to read the latest bestseller or a book from the stack on your nightstand during the somewhat more carefree days of summer. My colleagues and I shared a few of the books we plan to read this summer, along with recommended reading lists in this recent blog post, in case you’re searching for ideas. Happy reading, and enjoy the rest of your summer!

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by Mark DaGrossa, Director of Creative Services

In this edition of Cover to Cover, I’m going to take you through the steps we consider when we are designing a textbook.

After the project is awarded to us, we assemble our team and get down to work. First, we determine whether we are creating a design template or if one will be provided. If we are creating the template for our client, we need to define several items, including:

  • Chapter openers, unit openers, covers, testing pages, activity pages – all need to have the same visual theme or family but may have their own feel.
  • Icons – need to be created for each sidebar item
  • Head treatments – the head in the general body of the text will be worked on, A-Head, B-Head, C-Head, and so forth.
  • Columns – how many should each page have?
  • Fonts – We need to select fonts that allow for several options within the font family.
  • Printing – This is important to ensure specific margins or gutter spaces are incorporated into the design.
  • Photos – Will they have square cuts, borders, vignettes, breakout images, outlines or drop shadows? We also consider how captions will be shown.
  • Footers and folios – What will go into these areas?
  • Book map – is there one which shows how the pages flow? This is important if you want each unit to open with a spread.

For projects that are more design intensive, once we have a design template established, we move on to verbal visual conferences (VVC) for the pages. A VVC is a meeting that brings together the editor, art researcher, and the designer.

In the VVC, the designer uses a printout of the loose version of the pages, including the items that are static on the pages. The designer works through the manuscript, page by page, with the editor and art researcher, drawing a sketch of how each page will look. The editor highlights what is important in the content, allowing the designer get a better idea of the look and flow of the page. This also gives the art researcher a clearer understanding of what they need to be looking for and how the images will be used.

VVCs are conducted in the earlier stages of the project using rough sketches and will change somewhat once the final images are found, chosen, and approved. I’ve included an example below of a rough sketch and the final version so that you can see the types of changes that occurred as the project took shape.

Another important detail we need to factor is what grade level the content is being designed and written for. The lower the grade level, the less text and more imagery will be used. Lower grades get a bigger, more easily read font. Leading is larger, and the actual writing is grade level specific. Colors tend to be a bit brighter and primary. The imagery is much larger and more specific to the content, allowing younger students to make a better connection between the words and pictures. As the grade level climbs into the middle and high school levels, less imagery is required. Font sizes will be somewhat smaller, and the colors for images may be more muted so as not to distract from the text.

As you can see, there are many important items designers, working with editors and the art team, consider. Effective design ensures students better understand the program.

I hope this post has helped you learn more about how designers approach working on a textbook project. I welcome your design questions and ideas for future blog post subjects. Feel free to email me at: mdagrossa@westchesterpubsvcs.com

Have a great day!

Mark

 

by Mark DaGrossa, Director of Creative Services

Hello everyone! In this post, I will cover general use images and where we obtain them. As we work on most design projects, there is always a need to find the perfect image to enhance the design of the project. It may be a full page image, an image to use as an icon, or an item collaged into a header. No matter what the use, it is very important to follow the correct procedures for acquiring an image.

For example, did you know you cannot simply use anything you find on the Internet? If you do a Google Image search, many images will pop up. However, that doesn’t mean you have permission to use any of them.

I had no idea! So where can I find the images I need for our project?

If you need a simple image of a pencil, for example, you can probably do that yourself using a smartphone or digital camera. You could try to find free image resources online, though it can be tricky to determine what is actually free to use. For projects that are more specialized, it’s always best to retain the services of a designer. Designers possess the artistic training and access to image resources that will enhance the look and feel of your project far better than if you attempt to do the work yourself.

Many of the images designers use come from photographic stock houses, which offer professionals a huge selection of royalty free images, and are a very helpful resource when you’re trying to find a specific image. Most of these images can be manipulated and used however you need for the final design.

For certain projects, we need one amazing shot of a specific item or place. In that situation, we will often use a photographer based in that region. I recall a project where we were working on a sales incentive program and found this spectacular image of the destination hotel the clients were using. It was taken by a local photographer who only shot fine art images of Florida. A deal was worked out with all parties to use the images and the final product was completed for the client.

When a project requires images from a certain time period or place, then we work with museums or historical societies to source and use images from their collections. For example, if you need a tree from a specific natural park in Indiana, the designer will need to find a source who can verify that this tree is from this forest. You will not be able to just use any tree, especially if the description in the book calls out the tree and forest.

In conclusion, using the services of a designer is cost-effective because a designer will work with you to make sure that your design aesthetic is followed. They will coordinate with the owner of the images to obtain the necessary permissions or will find another reputable source to acquire pictures which suit your project. Working with a designer prevents the problems that can occur when images are obtained without receiving authorization from the artist to whom the work belongs. Resolving these issues can often cause delays that can be costly and time-consuming to fix. If you use a designer from the beginning, the process will go far more smoothly and you’ll end up with a project which is exactly as you envisioned, or even better.

Have a great day!

Mark