Opinion: JDF is supposed to revolutionize the design and print industries, but let's be honest: Is anybody really going to use it in their workflow?Stop me if you've heard this one …
"New technology guaranteed to revolutionize the printing industry, eliminate printing problems and streamline the production workflow …"
You're right, you HAVE heard that before. With desktop publishing, computer-to-plate, digital printing ... This time, the coming revolution is JDF.
JDF (Job Definition Format), one of the latest additions to the industry's alphabet soup of acronyms, is already making inroads into computerized business management and print production systems.
Based on the number and range of companies that presented JDF solutions at Print 05, JDF is now also coming to the front end—the content creation stage of the process—with the intention of pulling the client and designer into these integrated workflows and preventing communication problems that turn into production problems.
The CIP4 Web site lists one of the benefits provided by JDF as the "ability to bridge the gap between the customer's view of the product and the manufacturing process by defining a process-independent product view as well as a process-dependent view of a print job."
This is a big promise, one that I am not sure can be fulfilled … at least not in the mainstream design community.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that we understand the customer's view. (Of course, we don't always. How many times have you heard, "I'm not really sure what I want, but I'll know it when I see it"? Not even JDF can cure that hiccup.)
Proponents of JDF-enabled workflows claim that moving JDF into the front end will prevent problems from ever reaching the press. Designers, they say, will be able to check files against printer-defined specifications and fix problems before those files leave the designer's desk.
A nice theory, but what about in practice? Wasn't FlightCheck supposed to do the same thing? Or Pitstop? Or any of a number of proprietary systems?
Printability is important for Web pages, too. Click here to read more.
The fact is, these applications do work when they are used properly; the technology already exists to prevent problems from reaching the press.
What's missing is people with the knowledge necessary to use that technology.
For output companies, and for those designers who understand print production requirements and workflows, implementing JDF in the front end will certainly be a valuable tool. But for the many designers who have never heard the word "preflighting," it will be very difficult (if not impossible) to implement JDF at all.
Some designers don't understand that there could be problems, so they wouldn't look for them to begin with. Many don't know what the specific problems are, so they don't know what to look for. Others understand some of the potential problems, but don't know how to fix the ones that they do find. And still others simply don't care, and they wouldn't check for problems if you taped a preflight report directly to their monitor.
During a recent conference, one JDF proponent stated, "We'll just have to make people understand why they should use it." I can't even make some people use style sheets or CMYK colors. But these advocates want to make designers integrate information from a file format they don't recognize, checking against rules they don't understand, looking for problems that they don't know exist?
Live from the Print 05 conference: A reporter's notebook. Click here to read more.
The point is, pushing JDF into the front end will not be successful without a significant amount of education and re-education. And racing into yet another revolution isn't going to solve the underlying problems that cause bad files in the first place.
We might be better served, at least on the front end, to develop standards for using existing technology before we leap into new processes that will introduce their own new problems.
"Revolution" is an interesting word, really. It could mean to radically change something. Or it could mean to make a complete 360-degree turn … which ultimately puts you right back where you started.
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