Layout Champ and CCI

I agree the default size for the image dialog box could be a little bigger.

But this is really only an issue for me when I am cropping a regular-sized photo or a panel of mugs into a mugshot (where the face takes up only a small percentage of the entire original image). Then you have to blow up that box to get your crop done correctly.

Other than that I have few complaints with images.

Just don't get me started on sourcing/locking/unlocking, which can drive you nuts if you have a short turnaround between editions and you have to spend half that time just regaining access to the elements on your page.

In 10 years they have gotten many of the bugs out (especially in the web-based system Tribune is now using), but football season, as usual, will be the litmus test.

 

Lets put it this way, what could I do better with Layout Champ that I can't already do with Quark or InDesign? I've never seen LC, so I don't know.

 

Desker,

Sorry about the Layout Champ rant. I do not like it for page design. But, in all reality, you are pretty much stuck with what your paper is switching to.

My advice for making the switch is to, first, be aware that the CCI editorial system has some fairly different work-flow issues. Much of the training will be spent explaining that to reporters and desk folks. Design might be put on the back burner.

Find one of the trainers who will concentrate on showing you how Layout Champ works. It's a bit of a different beast than Quark or InDesign: less flexible and more structured. That structure is an advantage on run-of-the-mill inside pages.

That might give you more time to spend on more important fronts or packages. If you can, hang on to Quark and PhotoShop. They can be used to create page elements that then be brought into CCI. (InDesign is supposed to work more closely with CCI, but bugs have yet to be worked out. Perhaps, by this fall.)

A plan of action for any page is important in Layout Champ. Articles are mounted as blocks on the page. The order of what is mounted in those article blocks is important. There are ways to fix mistakes if you get the order mixed up, but it is usually easier to break the whole block up and start over.

But, that's all detail stuff that's pretty difficult to explain on a forum.

Again, the most important thing is to corner a trainer and have the trainer make explaining Layout Champ to you a priority. Have the trainer do a few pages and watch. Then, pump them for all the informatikon that you can. Otherwise, there's a chance that most of the training won't deal with page design.

 

It has been a long time since I touched Quark, but if the workload is immense and/or news breaks and you have to build or rebuild an entire page in 10 minutes with a seamless flow to the copy desk, it can be done in Layout Champ.

I don't know if it can be done in Quark or InDesign.

 

Yes, it can. Assuming you have a halfway-decent front-end program.

 

Agreed. Obviously there are a lot of factors to getting things pulled apart and put together - staff, conditions, etc. but if you know your system, Quark and InDesign are easy enough to play with... in fact, compared to what I'm hearing about all these blocks and structure in Layout Champ, I'd think my chances for major surgery are easier with Quark.

 

CCI just "thinks" differently. You'd better know what you want before you start nailing down elements. Quark and InDesign let you play without the system trying to fight you by redrawing columns or widening mug shots.

My biggest beef is with charts. The CCI table boxes are time-consuming and not very pretty. You can do some very cool breakouts with InDesign and you can edit their design with creativity.

CCI: You will be assimilated.

 

It's more of a big deal for editors and copy editors since changes can be made to text at any point in the process while you're designing the page. It's the database integration and ease of editing in Word that separates CCI from Quark. (I think... I've only worked at a CCI place.)

 

Surprisingly, CCI Table Edit can be very powerful. It's just incredibly difficult to learn, coding must be done in Word instead of Layout Champ, and you usually need an IT guy to write text tags for every possible font and type size. I've seen some great stuff done in Table Edit... of course, the same job takes about one-fifth the time on Illustrator or in Quark.

 

If you just leave the tag empty the chart will use whatever font your article is set to.

I usually write a couple of letters below the chart, then click on one of the letters to change the font or size to what I want. The type in the chart changes along with it. Then just get rid of those extra letters.

A little clunky, but it works well enough.