Sponsored feature: The cloud hosted Quark Brand Manager makes it quick and easy for brand owners to set up approved print items that can be accessed by remote agents.

Online brand management is a variation of web to print that allows companies to set up approved templates that incorporate their house styles, which can then be accessed remotely by approved employees, agents or service providers. They can enter their own personalised or localised content for output via print or other media such as emails.
Quark has now released Brand Manager, a cloud based hosted service that’s intended to simplify the creation and approval of brand-compliant marketing materials. It shares some technology with the company’s existing Web-to-Print system, introduced at the end of 2010.

The whole process is quick and easy to implement and according to Quark it can reduce the time it takes to create templates for brand-compliant collateral by up to 50%. There’s an even bigger reduction of 90% in the time it takes field teams to deliver customised material to consumers, making it practical to use print in situations where previously there might not have been time to get it out.

As a hosted SaaS (software as a service) product, it also means that users don’t need to install, run and maintain local servers, which decreases their costs and time taken. It’s also available 24/7 for access from anywhere.

Pricing for QBM starts at $62.50 a month per user (about £40) with a minimum deployment of 40 users (making a total of around £1600). There will also be agency and printer pricing models, available on application from Quark.

The concept is that a designer can use QuarkXPress 9 (or Adobe InDesign) to set up templates with protected and editable fields that conform to a particular brand’s standards. Once set up, the templates are uploaded to the cloud system where they can then be reviewed and approved online by brand managers, agencies, legal and subject matter experts. Review and approval is carried out by standard web browsers, with no special software needed.

After comments are made in a review, the original template designer is notified, and can make the necessary revisions, until the design is approved and released for use.

Release to end users

After approval and release, the templates can be accessed online by local retail sites, dealers, ad agencies, printers and the like, who can add their own custom content while ensuring it conforms to the brand standard for colour, fonts, positioning and so on.
This can also go through an approval process before being released for output. It makes it ideal for people with no design skills, who can localise content and still achieve professionally designed results.

In the USA this can be taken a stage further by optionally allowing users to order print directly through the Quark Network, a nationwide collection of accredited print service providers. This forms a ‘distribute then print’ option where intended recipients can either collect their print directly from the local print centre or they’ll only need to pay for short range delivery. For instance FedEx is part of the US Quark Network and runs print operations in some of its distribution centres. Quark says that it is considering extending its Network to Europe, but hasn’t put a date on this yet.

As a cloud-based solution, Quark Brand Manager can be deployed within minutes, the company said. It is built on Microsoft’s Azure Platform, which underpins Microsoft’s cloud computing services. As an online service it’s accessible to users of any computer platform that has internet access. It can streamline production workflows and automate the process of system updates without requiring IT resources.

Step by step

Template creation uses new Quark XTensions software that’s installed into a standard copy of QuarkXPress, including existing copies, which helps keep costs down. A new palette is added to QuarkXPress that lets the user add tags that define whether a selected frame’s
contents are locked or editable by the end recipient, and what elements can be changed. QuarkXPress stylesheets are used to define fonts, paragraph and character styles for text.

The ability to use Adobe InDesign documents broadens QBM’s appeal. However, it’s necessary to convert these to QuarkXPress format and then set them up as templates using the QBM XTtensions software. ‘We recommend Markzware’s ID2Q XTtension, which is very accurate’ says Nick Howard, director, Enterprise Products at Quark. The current ID2Q v.6 runs on QuarkXPpress 8 or 9 and costs about £170 for a single seat for Mac OS X or Windows, with discounts for five seat packs.

After templates are created, a the Brand Manager XTensions software is used to connect and upload the resulting template to the cloud. Notifications are sent to interested parties that the template is available for comment and approval. The approval process is tracked and can be customised to allow different levels of access. The Cloud server incorporates QuarkXPress Server technology, which converts the documents into formats that can be viewed by any web browser, with no need for special plugins.

‘It can be accessed anywhere there is an Internet connection,’ says Mr Howard. ‘However, the editing part of the system uses Flash, which means it’s not suitable for access by Apple iPads or iPhones,’ he points out. ‘We are looking at HTML5 in for the future, which would be Apple compatible, but it’s not ready yet. The QBM administration portal is accessible to any web device, including iPads.’

When comments are made that require the template to be altered, the designer is notified and can make the changes in QuarkXPress. The revised file is re-uploaded to the QBM server and the review process continues until the template is approved for general release.

A booking in and booking out process is used with the templates, to avoid the problem of more than one designer accidentally creating conflicting versions.

Once the template is approved and released, it becomes accessible to authorised end users, who will typically be local offices, retailers or dealers and their service providers.
Users see the templates on their web browser, with an indication of which fields are fixed and which can be altered. Typically the text changes will be for local office addresses, contact details, prices and so on, images that could be altered to show the local area, maps or perhaps unique product stocks (for say a franchised car dealer’s current used vehicle lists).

The documents are then output as PDFs that can be supplied to any print service provider. North American users can optionally supply files directly to Quark Network service providers. Although this network isn’t yet extended to Europe, Quark says it is willing to work with clients to add specific service providers.

Quark Brand Manager runs natively on the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform, which is used to build, host and scale web applications through data centres. The automatic scalability is important, as it allows users to obtain as much or as little capacity as they need, even changing in the course of the same day to meet peaks of demand, without paying for unwanted capacity the rest of the time.

‘Quark entered the brand management solutions market early with our QuarkXPress Server technology way back in 2003,’ said Ray Schiavone, Quark president and CEO.
‘Now, with Microsoft, we’re taking an early lead to leverage the Cloud so that dispersed marketing and sales teams can maintain their most valuable differentiator – their brand.’ Mr Howard adds that ‘the idea is to take the cost out of print.’

Quark Web-to-Print system

Introduced at the end of 2010, the Quark Web-to-Print system shares some features with Quark Brand Manager. The major technical difference is that the Web-to-Print system and its database runs on a user-hosted QuarkXPress Server, where Quark Brand Manager is entirely hosted by Quark, except for template creation which runs on QuarkXPress 9 on a local computer.

The Web-to-Print system allows publishing to Web, e-mail, and mobile devices as well as print, where so far Brand Manager is intended purely for printed materials.
As with the Brand Manager, the Web-to-Print system is based on templates set up in QuarkXPress, with the option to allow or prevent editing of specific items. This might be to protect brand identities as with the Brand Manager, but it might equally be used for business-to-consumer applications, to set up libraries of professionally designed business cards, stationery, banner ads and the like, where the customer can only change
limited content such as text and logos. There’s less emphasis on reviews and revisions in the Web-to-Print system so the automated collaboration features are absent.

There are two optional modules, for Variable Data Printing and Ad Production. The VDP module can merge information from databases and spreadsheets into templates. Anything on a page can be customised for individual recipients, including images as well as text. Varying amounts of text or varying sizes of pictures will automatically reflow the layout without manual intervention.

The Ad Production Module allows designs to be automatically resized and adjusted to fit different publications’ specifications and formats. Areas of most interest can be selected so that they remain maximised in all layouts. Smart, self-fitting tables can also be inserted.

Contact: www.quark.com