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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] Sort of OT: Why use .pdf files

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  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: "Steve Sando" <steve AT mrlucky.com>, "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] Sort of OT: Why use .pdf files
  • Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:01:01 -0600

Steve Sando wrote:
> Rick, you have the oddest way of looking at things!
>
> I'm too hungry to go point by point and it would be useless but

> 1. .doc was an extension created for MS Word. It is a proprietary format,
> readable by many other word processors.

That has been the convention as I said earlier.

> 2. pdf is NOT a proprietary format. There are other ways to
> create pdf files
> other than acrobat.

My understanding is that it surely is proprietary. Can you point us in the
direction of some of the free software to do this? (Without advertising of
course:) There is the pdf995 product, but it is not really "free." Is there
any chance you are thinking of postscript files rather than pdf's?

> 3. The fact that you can do layout and web publishing in Word
> does not mean
> that you should.

For some applications it is an excellent choice. I can quickly make changes
to the document, save it, and publish it in minutes. I do that periodically
for that "Grazing Narrative" as I have to go back and make the updates and
add new information and it is quite lengthy, even though broken down into
Paddocks (Chapters). I would never recommend it for a complete web site of
course, only for a specific page you drop in.

But I do recommend it as an excellent product to make most brochures. When I
help develop brochures at work, I work on a team and we, in turn, have our
graphic designer do a lot of the initial layout. Then we tweak from there.
Of course, she is working in Pagemaker as a rule.

Say, by the way, for all you graphic designer folks, here is the URL for one
of my latest covers for the Washburn Academy. This is something I do as an
extra assist to the agency since I have the skill, equipment, and desire.
The last three years have been my cover shots so it gets tough to come up
with exciting action type "educational" photos. We think we succeeded this
year. If I have not mentioned it before, it is at :

http://www.cesa4.org/programs-services/washburn/index.htm

This view is only the small size, and though you can not see much of it, the
catchlights of the strobe reflected rainbow colors in the soap bubbles,
including the inner layers. It is really decent at the full size of the
slick cover pub.

> A much bigger issue is a way the stuff looks. You may not want to be as
> slick as me but good design is key. That means color, contrast and balance
> and most of the home web sites I've seen don't address this. Also an
> understanding of when to use italics, bold and different weights is key.

Like so many things in life, although there are conventions in the industry,
we do see "new" aristic methods come along from time to time which may
change the thinking of graphic designers. But are they truly new, well,
maybe more of a mod from something earlier:)

> Why don't you ask nicely and have someone create you a PDF and offer both
> version s of your brochure for download?

Perhaps you may have missed it earlier, but I had mentioned that I do have
access to Acrobat. In fact, I used to have v.3 on this machine but did not
put it back on after a need to reformat the drive a few years ago. And as I
said, I do not care for PDF files unless you just have to have them.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams




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