GWG "Cross Media Standards and Best Practices" Survey Highlights Importance of Cross Media Workflows

Standards and best practices

The survey indicates that there are no established standards or best practices in this area as yet, as each company uses its own formulae and tools. The variety of tools and content formats, along with this lack of standards and best practices, not only makes it difficult to streamline processes, but also makes it difficult to exchange interactive content between workflows.

"The industry is clearly asking for alignment, best practices and standards to enable exchange between systems," says Bart Van Looy, the ICT DTP Publishing Project Leader at Sanoma Media who also serves as co-Chairman of the GWG Cross Media subcommittee, and is the author of the Survey. "Respondents know that PDF is not the best format to use in the long run, even though it is frequently used as intermediary solution.

"New, emerging technologies such as HTML5 and ePub are being looked at to better serve their needs, but there, too, exists a need for standards and best practices regarding advertisements, color conversion and quality control to exchange content for cross media output between systems."

More about the Cross Media Subcommittee

The GWG Cross Media subcommittee has been established to review the use of technology to determine if new specifications/standards, best practices, and/or use of other formats (XML, PDF, ePub) are needed to guarantee quality and accuracy control of cross media files as they proceed through creation, processing, exchange and output workflows. The Cross Media subcommittee co-chairs are Bart Van Looy, Sanoma Media, Belgium; and Erwin Danis, Roularta Media.

Next seminars: London, UK - January 23, 2013 - open to the public

GWG is offering two free seminars being held at the London College of Communications in London, UK, on January 23, 2013. The first seminar will cover the new GWG2012 specifications for the creation and preflight of PDF/X-4 files to ensure successful production.

The second seminar will provide an overview of the new GWG PDF for Packaging specifications that streamline and ensure packaging design and production workflows.

Additionally, the GWG will hold its next member meeting, which is open to members and approved observers, in London on January 24 and 25, 2013.

Those interested in attending the seminars or observing the member meeting may send an email to info@gwg.org to reserve a seat, or request more information.