Do-it-yourself Publishing

The new desktop systems can save you time and money. And you control the copy from beginning to end.

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If you are running up some hefty typesetting bills -- for sales brochures, catalogs, proposals, price sheets, office forms, newsletters, instruction manuals, what have you -- relief may be in sight. For an investment of about $10,000, you can buy the equipment to do your own page layout and typesetting in-house -- everything right up to the final press-run. All it takes is a personal computer, a sophisticated laser printer, and the appropriate software.

Sam Savage was an early convert to desktop publishing, as the new systems are called. Early in 1985, his Chicago software-development firm, General Optimization Inc., was getting ready to release its first commercial program, and Savage had begun to collect estimates of what he'd have to pay to produce a technical manual. "What one software publisher was telling me," he says, "was that I should count on spending $50 a page just for typesetting. Then I should figure illustrations and graphs would cost as much again as the type. If we had to revise anything along the way, the price went out of sight." The manual was to run a good 150 pages, so he faced at least $15,000 in typesetting and graphics bills.

At the time, Apple Computer Inc. was about to introduce a new laser printer that, connected to its Macintosh computer, could produce near-typeset-quality text in a variety of typefaces and sizes, line drawings and graphs, and headline type -- all on the same page. Since Savage already owned a Macintosh, as well as word processing and graphics software, acquiring an Apple LawerWriter to set the type for his manual looked like a good way to cut costs. So while he wrote and revised the text on his Macintosh, a graphic artist helped design the manual's format and used the computer to create dozens of illustrations, charts, and special symbols. Instead of sending off a manuscript to a commercial typesetter, Savage simply harnessed his LaserWriter to produce camera-ready copy that could go straight to the printer.

Figuring his exact savings wasn't possible, Savage concedes, because he had to spend a fair amount of time simply learning the quirks of his new system."There were times we'd want to put the Mac in our laps and stroke it," he recalls, "and other times we just wanted to drop-kick it out the window." But even after paying about $6,000 to buy the LaserWriter, he figures that General Optimization saved several thousand dollars over the estimated $15,000 for commercial typesetting and pasteup. And the savings will be even greater on the next big project the company undertakes, now that it already owns all the equipment and software it needs.

Moreover, Savage adds, his in-house typesetting system yielded some other dividends as well. "We were able to give people who tested early versions of our software program a more polished version of the manual, and we didn't have to worry about the cost of resetting our type if someone suggested a revision." He also set type for diskette labels, reference cards, licensing agreements, and sales brochures. "Heck, we even produced our business cards on it," Savage says.

The single most expensive part of a desktop publishing system is almost always the laser printer, a hybrid offspring of personal computer and photocopier technology. There are about 40 different models on the market, and more in the offing. The printers are as easy to connect and operate as the standard dotmatrix and letter-quality printers that attach to most computers. But what emerges from the laser printer is an extremely fine-grained dot image, each dot generated by a laser beam, that is crisp enough to be used as camera-ready art for offset printing or photocopying. Moreover, the laser printer can produce much more complicated kinds of images than conventional printers; users can select a variety of typefaces and sizes, and can reproduce intricate charts, engineering drawings, even freehand illustrations.

Just as LaserWriter has set the standard for typesetting devices in desktop publishing, Apple's Macintosh remains the leading electronic tool for actually creating text and graphics. The computer has been designed especially to make graphic images much easier to produce than earlier personal computers could. And to help in doing layouts, the Mac's screen displays variations in type styles and sizes as they will appear on an actual page, known in the trade as WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get").

For companies that already own the IBM Personal Computer, the acknowledged standard for business uses, desktop publishing has not been quite so simple. Since the PC does not have the built-in graphics capability of the Macintosh, it is limited in both what it can do and in its ease of operation. While it's possible to transfer text and graphic images from a PC to a Macintosh, the process is relatively cumbersome, requiring a lot of reformatting of text and data. Several software developers have begun to offer programs for the PC that emulate Macintosh page-layout programs, however, and more are sure to follow. Still, for good performance, these programs often require a high-end PC AT model, as well as special graphics and co-processor boards.

Desktop publishing is by no means limited to simple jobs. Software developers have created several programs that give a good deal of control over layout and design. These programs have features for creating multicolumn formats, mixing different type sizes and styles, and editing text and drawings. Even complicated newsletters, catalogs, and brochures are now well within the capabilities of a desktop publishing system.

As publications get more complex, of course, the savings from do-it-yourself typesetting and layout also tend to mount up, especially after employees learn the finer points of using page-layout software. But there is more than just a financial payoff from desktop publishing. Unlike conventional typesetting, desktop systems provide almost instantaneous turnaround -- a very important feature for newsletters and advertising materials, where it's often vital to be able to make last-minute changes.

Alan Leckner is a New York City graphic designer who uses the system as an elaborate -- but still cost-effective -- sketch pad. "The Mac has become an electronic pencil for us," Leckner explains. "I'll sometimes sit right down at the computer with clients and we'll just fiddle around, organizing an ad while they're right in the office with me." Changes are easy to make, and Leckner's clients get to see almost exactly what the finished artwork will look like. Once a mock-up of a project has been approved, however, he generally has it reset, using higher-quality phototype from a commercial type house. "The type we can get with the Mac is pretty good," he says, "but it's not quite good enough for corporate brochures and annual reports."

Leckner's objections are echoed by most book and magazine publishers, and by company managers who demand the highest possible standards for the image they project in print. Although laser-printer output is dramatically better than what conventional computer printers can produce, it still falls short of the level of quality set by good phototypesetting. Also, the selection of type styles available for the laser printer remains relatively limited; currently, there are several dozen typefaces for laser printers, compared with the hundreds that have been designed for phototypesetting systems.

Desktop publishing results can also be disappointing for people without design experience. While mastering the software is easy, producing an attractive page demands a certain amount of "visual literacy," which is why Sam Savage worked with a graphic designer when he did his instruction manual. Although the developers of desktop publishing software are currently hard at work adding such features as built-in newsletter and ad formats, right now the programs offer few clues to guide amateur desktop publishers who lack design training and layout skills.

Still, despite their limitations, it's clear that even the present generation of desktop publishing systems is a workable, low-cost solution for most business publishing needs. And as more sophisticated systems appear, the time will probably come when desktop publishing will be able to handle even the most demanding, quality-sensitive publications.