Want to know a magazine editor’s biggest pet peeve?
It’s going back and forth between a hundred pages to suggest edits all over the place. Even worse, jotting them down and sending them to all team members through email.
It gets even more complicated when the designers fail to understand what the feedback means, and you can imagine the frustration for everyone. Add two more revisions, and your magazine will never make it to the shelves on time.
Then, how do magazines ensure this doesn’t happen? Two words. Magazine proofing.
However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Magazine proofing is a fusion of art and technology every editor needs to make things easier for creative teams collaborating with them.
This guide will cover everything you need about online proofing for magazines, why it’s done, and how to do it like pros.
So let’s begin!
Table of Contents
What is magazine proofing?
From magazine design ideas to the final publishing, the procedure of creating a magazine is extensive. It goes through many stages of content development, design, and marketing. Yet ensuring high quality and maintaining standards is a crucial aspect for all.
Magazine proofing is getting the magazine’s content, design, and marketing collateral reviewed and approved online.
When we say online, we mean on a platform that allows you to collaborate with your team, upload and edit files, and invite stakeholders and managers to oversee your progress and mark their approvals.
Let’s take online proofing for photography magazines as an example here. Your team uploads cover ideas with images of high quality; you mark areas where it needs changes or attach other pictures for inspiration. The designer understands feedback clearly and resolves it right on the spot for everyone to see and move ahead.
That sounds like a walk in the park if you’re doing it right. Yet again, a streamlined workflow isn’t the only benefit of magazine proofing. So let’s look at more of these benefits to help you understand why magazine proofs will change your take on creative collaboration in the industry forever.
Why is online proofing essential for your magazines?
We have always consumed content in our day-to-day living as a form of entertainment and information, but the industry is more competitive now.
Suppose you’ve worked at a content marketing or publishing company. In that case, you must know how hectic the workload can become when trying to send out unique articles and appealing visuals daily.
Having a review and approval process in place amidst this busy schedule with online proofing software will solve your problems quickly.
Promotes effective communication across teams
A magazine proofing software will allow you to communicate with your teams, managers, stakeholders, and every person in the Vogue office globally (yes, we’re for real). Being on the same platform will save you from long email threads and 20 different chat rooms.
Ensures brand compliance
It’s that slightly different tone of blue that your brand uses, but how do you explain that to your designer? Online proofing software that allows you to leave visual feedback and annotate a PDF or image will free you from the shackles of only using verbal feedback as the only way of communication.
Collaborating in real-time
Endless meetings often end up killing the creative drive in you. And for magazines, creativity stands as the most valued quality. That is where online proofing software can help you avoid long hours of meetings and collaborate with each member of the team efficiently.
You can leave comments, tag relevant people, and get all these notifications on your project dashboard in real-time.
No more missed deadlines!
A good online proofing software like GoVisually also reminds you when a project deadline is approaching. This way, you can always stay on top of your game and finish work timely.
This feature also helps you organize all your projects and lets you plan your workload for the week.
Helps categorize and organize projects
One of the biggest hassles you can find yourself in is the disorientation of assets.
Imagine spending hours on finding a project because it wasn’t categorized properly or missing out on an important design because you couldn’t trace it in the files. Now that can be a real nightmare for editors.
But with online proofing software, you can avoid that. It helps you categorize all designs and PDFs into different projects so you can access them easily and download them directly from the app when needed.
Gets you fast approvals from stakeholders
The ping pong of getting approval from stakeholders can prove to be a real struggle. You’d often chase them for days, if not weeks, to get feedback and support.
And one of the reasons why that happens is because the assets get lost in email threads, or the feedback isn’t rightly suggested. With online proofing software, you can avoid both these major roadblocks. All the suggestions you make using GoVisually are highlighted as comments, and you can even compare versions of the same design to see exactly what has been changed. This speeds up the feedback process and helps you get faster approvals.
6 must-have features to create great magazine proofs
Now that you know how crucial magazine proofing is, let’s review the 6 must-have features that a great online proofing software should have to assist in faster and better magazine proofs.
Assorted file support
It should support all kinds of files to make things easier for you. With GoVisually, you can upload and annotate any file type, including WebM and WebP files. You can also easily upload video and GIF files and add timestamps’ feedback.
Time-stamped comment checklist
Speaking of efficient feedback and adding your comments to the exact timeframes can simplify things for both parties. And with GoVisually, you can do that. This helps the designer understand where the change is needed exactly and makes reviewing for you easier as you’d be able to compare the timestamps.
Full version control
You should also have access to the complete edit history. This way, you’ll be able to trace changes and make final edits without wondering what changed.
GoVisually takes this forward and lets you compare different versions of the same proof. This side-by-side comparison allows you to see the changes and decide which understanding is better. Thus, minimizing the review time.
Visual annotations
Who doesn’t like simplifying the feedback?
And one of the best ways to do that is to make things visual so that they can be seen easily. That is why GoVisually supports various visual annotations like square boxes and arrows to make feedback fun and easy.
Cloud-based storage
Make sure that whichever online proofing software you sign up for has cloud-based storage. This would protect your data from being corrupted or breached.
Supercharged integrations
And finally, the online proofing software you select should be compatible with the other apps you use.
For instance, if you create designs in Adobe CC, it should have Adobe CC integration, so your workload becomes more efficient instead of increasing. Similarly, if you use any project management tool like Asana or Trello, it can be integrated with those apps too.
Luckily for you, GoVisually offers integrations with 3000+ apps using Zapier that can supercharge your work within minutes!
Get GoVisually today to ace magazine proofing!
Wondering if GoVisually can truly help you knock out shelves? Book a free demo today to explore the true power of online proofing.
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