Efficiency

One aspect of doing production art is the aim at being efficient. Of course, accuracy is key, but after that has been established, you need to examine a project or your everyday workflow for ways to streamline the processes involved.

It’s just like any kind of manufacturing workflow; if you want to increase the profitability of any process, you need to look at how to make the end product with the same or better quality in fewer steps, if possible, or make the steps you take more efficient.

Currently, I am working on a project with a client, where the process of the production for some document type has had an established process for about two years. One production artist employed previously had some scant documentation which I was to follow. The current production artist on staff needed some help with the overflow work, and some of the jobs had unique twists that were also giving some unexpected results when following the currently understood procedures.

So, I took up this project with an aim at first learning the given procedures, then examining the whole aspect of the workflow to see what can be modified, or fixed.

After being on this assignment for almost two months, what have I discovered? Basically, almost half of the steps that used to be taken to work on each job were never really necessary.

If the previous production artist had had the time and asked the question “Is there anything I can do to make this process better?” he may have tried a few things, or looked at how the software REALLY works, just to see what could be changed.

There is no harm in copying a layout file, for example, and trying something to see what happens. What’s the worst that could happen? Either the document is so screwed up, you need to revert, or the application might freeze or crash. Big deal.

If not, maybe you see something that needs to be done differently, or you stumble upon a way to do your work in a few less steps. And in a busy workflow, that could save many minutes over the course of a whole day.

What did I do?

• Pre-emptively set up an efficient set of type styles that fit into all elements


• Identified adjustments to the procedures that by-passed the previous need for several work-arounds


• Fixed some problems caused by a script by writing a new script that did not create the same problems (the original was JavaScript, I used AppleScript)

Now, we can do the production for these documents in half the time they have been done. That might allow the company to which I am now assigned to keep their staff for production artist at one. That might mean I may not get offered a permanent position by them. But that at least means I should get a good report from them to the temp agency for which I am working. Hopefully, that will land me another assignment quickly after this one’s done.

So what are some things you can do or have done to increase your efficiency?