We have a longstanding policy of applying quality controls to
all materials that appear in NI publications. Over the years we
have been able to offer quicker, cheaper and more user-friendly
methods of delivery as they have become available. We believe the
options offered to our advertisers are at least comparable with
those of other UK national newspapers.
The options for sending files are Adstream's Quickprint, DubSat's AdSend, Qmuli's adfast and Specle's SpecleSend
which are intended for anyone from the occasional sender
through to professional, high-volume users with critical colour
requirements. You can find support helpline telephone numbers for
each of the four providers on their respective pages. They will be
happy to help you to deliver your print file to News
International.
These systems run pre-flight checks on your file to make sure
there are no obvious technical problems. If there are, they will
need to be fixed before sending the file. This alerts senders to
problems early in the process, while there is still time to resolve
them. We do not have the facilities to make corrections for you.
Without these safeguards, the errors might only come to light on
the printed page, with a negative impact on the advertiser and the
publication. These precautions are therefore to protect both
advertiser and publisher.
Any advertisers who are either unable, or unwilling to send
their files by either of these have two other alternatives. They
could send their file to a production house, who would prepare it
and send it to us for a commercial fee. We are happy
to offer contact details. Alternatively, if an advertiser
emails us the raw text and a hi-res version of any logos, we
will typeset their ad and send them a proof, free of
charge. We are happy to do this so long
as the design is not exceptionally complicated and the
copy is supplied in good time.
All sorts of problems can, and often do, arise with files
sent by email, including:
they are sometimes intercepted by NI
anti-spam filters;
they can take hours to arrive;
fonts will not reproduce unless they are
embedded;
graphics can be low resolution;
they can be the wrong dimensions;
they can contain compressed images;
they can be versions of pdf not supported by
NI systems;
the file can include margins, cropmarks,
slugs, etc.;
images can include RGB and other colours that
will not print;
images can use too-high ink weights, which
can cause web-breaks on press;
there are often problems with transparency
and overprinting, causing logos and images to 'disappear';
In addition to all the checks that cause a file to 'fail', there
are numerous other checks that give the sender 'warnings' for their
own information. These include recommendations about minimum text
sizes, minimum rule weights, resolution, etc. Senders may
choose to ignore these, but each ad delivery option records the
fact, which can be helpful when investigating repro issues.
We constantly review the technology available and are keen
to offer any other alternatives that would give advertisers more
choice, at the most competitive price, while continuing to run
quality checks at the sender's end.
For all the above reasons, we do not anticipate any change
in our policy in the foreseeable future.
