Design-first Workflow
For some publications, design is king. The text is important, but the designer holds the trump card in these cases. It's no slight to the writers and editors, it's just the balance of power in some workflows. Typical examples of this approach can be found in many advertising agencies, package design firms, and publishers who develop design-centric print pieces.If the most important factor in these scenarios is design, then it's logical that the writing must fit the design, not vice-versa. This means the publication process is initiated by a designer using InDesign, and then the writers write to fit using InCopy, and then the fit copy goes back into InDesign for publication (Figure 9.1).
Figure 9.1. A design-first workflow starts in InDesign, then migrates to InCopy, and finishes back in InDesign.
Chapter 8 for more on exporting stories and creating assignments). If only placeholder frames are included in the New Assignment dialog, it's impossible for the writer to write accurate text for captions and callouts because the images won't be visible in InCopy. If the InDesign files and related images are relatively small, and the computer network is fast enough to handle opening native InDesign (.indd) files, the InDesign user might be able to skip the process of creating assignments. For example, if the workflow consists of single-page ads in InDesign, and the network is fast, InCopy users might be able to open the InDesign layout in InCopy with acceptable performance. However, if you try opening native InDesign files, and performance is unacceptable, you should create assignment files to speed things up.The InCopy user opens either the InDesign layout (.indd) or InCopy assignment (.inca) because page visualization and writing to fit are of paramount importance in this workflow. The InCopy user shouldn't open the InCopy stories (.incx) directly, because they won't be able to write to fit. Remember that InCopy cannot calculate copyfit statistics of an exported InCopy story without the page geometry information that's stored in InDesign (.indd) and InCopy assignment (.inca) files.The InCopy user checks out the stories that need work (File > Check Out) and writes and edits the copy as needed. Unless the design and editorial departments have agreed otherwise, the InCopy user should format all text using the character and paragraph styles created by the InDesign user.The InCopy user must watch the Copyfit Progress Info bar as he works on the story to ensure the text doesn't go over or under the allocated space (see Chapter 8 for information about copyfit calculations). Tracked changes and notes don't affect copyfit calculations, so InCopy can be trusted to provide accurate text fitting information.The InCopy user should also keep an eye out for notes left by the InDesign user. With more experience using the InDesign/InCopy workflow, it will become apparent which co-workers tend to use the Note tool and which don't. The writer/editor will become more accustomed to looking for notes from the Design department. Notes are much easier to see in Galley and Story views than Layout view, which is another good reason to do most of the editing in one of those two views. Another approach is to use the Notes palette (see Chapter 5) which is an easy way to search through a document and find all the notes, irrespective of the view mode.When the InCopy stories are finished being edited, the content must be saved (File > Save Content) and checked in (File > Check In or File > Check in All). At this point, the designer can be notified that the editor is done with the stories so the project can be completed.If the InDesign layout is open at the same time a story is saved and checked in, the status icon in the Assignments palette changes from In Use and Out of Date


