T. ROWE PRICE

T. Rowe Price Investor is an award-winning educational investment magazine. T. Rowe Price was my primary client during my 7 years at Dow Jones. We produced Investor, as well as TakeNote, a special supplemental insert available in all formats, and Investor Plus, a monthly newsletter available on iPad and web. 

I played an integral role in establishing efficient systems to produce parallel print, iPad, web, and PDF versions of the magazine, and participated in the full lifecycle from template creation, to copy flow and image research, infographics, prepress, and publishing to the App Store.

I took on responsibilities of crafting, peer training, documenting, implementing, and managing our system and workflows, alongside my existing design & production work. I ensured that the whole process was efficient, consistent, and reasonably easy to understand.  

This system could be seen as an analog prototype for software. Software could easily manage much of this process, as it relied almost entirely on users following strict procedures. This was a challenge, as there were many opportunities for human error.

My work on this project was the impetus for my wanting to shift towards UX, with a focus on systems and functionality. 

MULTICHANNEL DESIGN & PRODUCTION ・  CRAFTING & MANAGING systems & WORKFLOWS ・ collaboration with developers ・ TEAM TRAINING & DOCUMENTATION ・ TEMPLATES & OBJECT LIBRARIES ・ INFOGRAPHICS ・ ILLUSTRATION ・ MOTION GRAPHICS ・ PHOTO RETOUCHING & COMPOSITING

System & workflows

When T. Rowe Price wanted to create iPad, web, and PDF versions alongside the existing printed quarterly investment magazine, our team needed to completely learn new tools and develop a new workflow in a single quarter.

I was quickly able to understand the technical aspects, requirements, and dependencies involved in using K4 (our new content management system) and Adobe DPS (Digital Publishing Solution). Because I was interested and had the aptitude, I worked with the developers to customize our implementation of K4.

The entire ecosystem of the K4 CMS, Adobe DPS, our file structure and naming conventions, magazine issues, and all the various channel versions (iPad, print, web, iPad PDFs, and web PDFs) needed to flow seamlessly. I created and documented the system and workflows for production from end to end. 

Documentation

I had initially envisioned creating this documentation as a wiki. However, it was created in printed form because people wanted to be able to write notes for themselves and check things off as they went along. Having the document off-screen also made it easier for them to follow without having to switch between more apps

Folder Structure

The folder structure was the backbone of the system. I created a blank folder structure to be used as a template to start each quarter. 'Base names' for magazine sections were used throughout the system, and could be copied and pasted from the folder names to avoid mistakes. They were used in both K4 and Adobe DPS, often as part of automated processes. The folder structure included templates, including hints for efficiently creating image assets for various channels,

Finished Product

I was heavily involved in the full design process from end to end, including uploading final iPad folios to the App Store. I designed layouts, charts, and illustrations. I created print & iPad templates and object libraries. I also did photo research, retouching, compositing, and motion graphics. I did prepress for print, asset creation for all channels, and assembled Adobe DPS folios for publishing to the App Store.