InCopy - a good solution for a small agency?

May 2, 2008 11:35 AM

My small ad agency is looking to speed workflow and reduce errors stemming from borked formatting going from word docs, etc. to InDesign. What's the skinny on InCopy? Tell me about your first-hand experience with it; is it easy to learn, easy to use, etc? We are all very happy with InDesign, but we're not going to give it to every writer, and it's tedious to have the writer sit next to the AD and go "no, put the semicolon there and the period there." I want to get a feel for the value that InCopy might bring. Also, what are the hidden drawbacks that I may not have thought of? Thanks.
posted by Mister_A to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Best answer: A client of mine is a major college newspaper, and all their reporters write their stories in InCopy, then the editors use InDesign to bring it all together.

Most of that stuff is supported by a company out of New York that also manages a K4 system for managing the assignment, check-in and check-out of articles, etc.

They like it because it fits together well, I like it because it rarely breaks, and we're all happy. I'm pretty sure it cost $TEXAS though.
posted by frijole at 12:11 PM on May 2, 2008

Oh, forgot to mention, we (me and some other folks from the company I work for who support the paper) and the editors had a 2 day training session from the New York folks, and then showed the reporters how to use it, so I'd say the learning curve is pretty quick.
posted by frijole at 12:12 PM on May 2, 2008

Piggybacking (sorry, Mister_A) to ask if it integrates at all with other Adobe software like Illustrator or Photoshop. I also work in a small ad agency, and the "borked formatting" Mister_A mentions is a hobgoblin around here as well, but InDesign only represents about 25% of our total output.

And thanks for asking, Mister_A! I had no idea this even existed. Downloading a free trial is nice and all, but necessitates going through a steep learning curve while using a crippled version of the software and working against time or other limitations.
posted by Shepherd at 12:28 PM on May 2, 2008

Response by poster: frijole, thanks very much, this is good to hear. Do you have the name of the NYC co. that trained your group?

Also, I've heard k4 mentioned a few times, can someone tell me a little more about it?

Thanks

A
posted by Mister_A at 1:39 PM on May 2, 2008

Best answer: We use InDesign and InCopy at my paper. It's not a bad system. I don't like it as much as I did QuarkCopyDesk, but the integration with indesign is very good. Our two are linked via Atex, however, so there's going to be more manual control over geometry and updates for your staff.

How much text are you talking about? If you just want to give people the ability to type directly into boxes that are parts of the design, it is absolutely perfect for this. Forget all about Word. But where its real strengths lie are in more lengthy pieces of text -- like article-length. There you get the full typographic power of InDesign, without any of the layout stuff.

Basically, if you're using Word just now for back-and-forth to the layout, and find difficulties with formatting, then InCopy is your solution. Go for it. You can memail me any questions, too.
posted by bonaldi at 6:26 PM on May 2, 2008

Just in case somebody else stumbles upon this thread with the same questions I had about InCopy: zero integration with Illustrator, which doesn't even recognize the InCopy extension as a text file.

Alas.
posted by Shepherd at 5:58 AM on May 7, 2008