Technical Field

The present invention relates to systems and methods for proofing printed articles. The invention has particular application in on-line preparation and ordering of greetings cards or wedding invitations.

Definitions

In this document, terms have the meanings defined below:

Client - an application or system that accesses a remote service on another computer system, known as a server, by way of a network.

Customized - customization is the ability for the user to change details that will print. The customizations can include changing of text, insertion of graphics, changing colours of text and backgrounds, changing font size, font leading, font itself, insertion of photographs, manipulation of photos (resizing, transparency, positioning, colour adjustments).

Data Set - typically a spreadsheet with a header row followed by individual rows or records of data, which supplies the variable data for a Variable Data Print job.

Hot Folder - this is a directory which has specific print job characteristics set-up in advance. Things like paper size, paper type, simplex/duplex, orientation, special colour or image settings or adjustments etc.

Imposition - is the process of arranging printed pages correctly prior to printing so that they make most efficient use of paper. Typically multiple 2-sided pages are laid out on a single large print sheet and after printing the final product is created by cutting, slitting and creasing the printed items.

Item - an individual unit of printed matter.

Personalized - a variable value that changes for each page of a print job.

Portable Document Format (PDF) - is a file format created by Adobe Systems used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout 2D document that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics which compose the documents.

Print Job - a single customer's order or job, this could be a generic printed job where every item in it is identical, or a variable data print job where each item in the print job is unique, based on a supplied set of data.

Proof- a visual representation of what the printed file will look like.

Server - is any combination of hardware or software designed to provide services to clients.

Template - a particular design which encompasses the shape, size, folding characteristics, colour, type of objects (graphics and text) and layout which is used as a starting point for a customer to select what they are after.

Text copy - are the words or text that is to be printed for an individual item.

VDP (Variable Data Printing) - ability to print a job with variables that change the output for each individual item printed.

Web-to-print - an automated set of processes whereby when an online order is placed, a variable data PDF is generated; this PDF document is imposed, formatted for printing, overlaid with operational instructions and aids, and sent to the correct printer as a print job with paper type and other print characteristics. The job is completed without any human interaction.

Background to the Invention

There exist several VDP (variable data printing) web-based software applications. Typically, these systems involve a template driven range of products that are stored on a server and which can be edited and proofed by users on-line. A user will typically select a template, and then provide information to customise that template. The user may create, for example, greetings cards, or wedding invitations or the like.

If a user wishes to proof the printed article that will be produced, then they are typically required to click on a "Generate Proof button which sends their customised information to the server, the server generates a printable file such as a PDF file, and then sends this PDF back to the computing device of the user where it is displayed as a proof to the user. This involves transmission of data from the user to the server, processing effort by the server, and transmission of a PDF file back to the user for display. This procedure introduces latency due to transmission of data between locations that requires the user to wait for the proof to be displayed. Furthermore, this procedure places a load on the web-server in combining templates with custom information which further adds to the latency experienced by the user.

Furthermore, the proof displayed to the user is typically represented as a series of flat two dimensional drawings. For a single sided piece of paper this is adequate, but for more complex folded items of printed matter such as folded cards, envelopes, and many more complex shapes and folding methods, it is very difficult for the user to appreciate what the finished item will look like or to comprehend the relative look and feel of the finished item.

By way of further explanation, graphic designers typically use page layout programs such as Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress to create periodical publications, posters, and printed matter of all kinds and description including complex multipage and folded pieces of printed matter. A document template is typically created to assist the designer. This template helps the designer build the folding item of printed matter in a series of one sided pages, so the finished, printed product, is printed on the correct side of the paper such that after creasing and folding the items, the images and text are in the correct sequence and orientation.

A simple example of this process and the end product are displayed in figure 1 in relation to a folding invitation card which has printed matter on both the inside and the outside of a card. In figure 1, a design document layout is shown including page#l, labelled with reference numeral 100, and page#2, labelled with reference numeral 110. Page#l has an upper portion 112 and a lower portion 114. Similarly, page#2 has an upper portion 116 and a lower portion 118. Pages 1 and 2 are intended to be printed on opposing sides of the same piece of cardboard. Once printed, the card is to be folded in half along the junctions of the upper and lower portions. Therefore, portions 112 and 116 end up forming the rear leaf of the card, and the portions 114, 118 end up forming the front leaf of the card. It is to be noted that the upper portion 112 of page#l is upside down and so are both portions 116, 118 of page#2. As is easily noticed in the figure, because certain portions are inverted, and it is not immediately clear how the portions will be arranged in the final printed article, for a person unfamiliar with imposition and printing it can be difficult to visualize what the finished product will look like and how it will operate.

There remains a need for improved systems and methods to enable proofing of printed articles.

Summary of the Invention

In a first aspect the present invention provides a method of proofing a folded printed article including the steps of: rendering a three dimensional representation of a printed article; displaying the representation of a folded printed article on a display; and wherein the representation may be manipulated by the user.

The user may be able to manipulate the representation of the article by rotating, flipping or opening and closing the article.

The step of rendering the three dimensional representation may be carried out on the computing device of the user.

The user may be able to modify the article by providing user defined information which is combined with template information on the computing device of the user.

The method may further include the step of periodically transmitting user defined information from the computing device of the user to a server.

The template information may define one or more dynamic objects.

In a second aspect the present invention provides a system for producing folded printed articles including: storage means for storing template information defining aspects of a number of printed articles; making template information available to remote users along with instructions that cause a three dimensional representation of the printed article to be rendered on the computing device of the user, and which cause the three dimensional representation to be displayed on a display of the user and allow the user to manipulate the representation.

The system may further include receiving means for receiving user defined information.

The system may further include a production system that automatically produces printed articles based on received user defined information.

Brief Description of the Drawings

An embodiment of the present invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

Figure 1 illustrates a prior art method;

Figure 2 is schematic view of the document set up process used in an embodiment of the present invention;

Figure 3 illustrates the design document of figure 2 being made available and used by a web user;

Figures 4A and 4B illustrate on-screen proofing of a printed article on the web client of figure 3; and

Figure 5 illustrates the production process of the article being proofed in figure 4.

Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiment

Embodiments of the invention utilise specifically formatted design document templates. Every item that has any difference in shape, size, folding method, or crease location requires a different document template. The following description has been written to explain the invention by using the software program known as InDesign provided by Adobe Systems Inc. It is to be understood that the invention may be carried out using alternative software.

Referring to figure 2, an example of the setup required for a template 14 is illustrated. The document setup includes the width, height, margins, bleed and slug definitions. The document setup also includes all of the standardised document information.

Initially, a list of colour swatches is defined for designers to use. Every swatch is defined with a 3 digit number followed by the name of the colour. Furthermore, all swatches are set to RGB colour mode. The designer now only selects from the predefined large list of colour swatches. The designer has a large degree of flexibility because they can still apply tints and transparencies to each colour which makes the colours available to the designer vast.

Next, potentially hundreds of Paragraph Styles are pre-defined. Paragraph Style "Groups" are used to define "Font Packs." A font pack is a group of paragraph styles in the same font which are defined with all of the settings available in InDesign which are well known in the industry, a few examples of these include basic character formats such as font size and leading, character colour, hyphenation rules, justification, and many more. A large number of different paragraph styles are defined for a single "font pack". This allows a designer to select a pre-defined paragraph style to suit any size font required. Each of these Paragraph Styles are given an intuitive name (some examples are Cover Verse Large, Initials Medium, and Initials Large). Next, the exact same paragraph style names are defined for every other "font pack". Character spacing, leading and height are all aligned between "font packs". This means that a designer can design an item in a single font pack but later, the end user can select from a range of different fonts, and any of the selected fonts will look balanced in the overall design.

Lastly, several document Layers are created. In InDesign, a layer is like a transparent sheet of plastic. A user can manually (or automated via scripting) turn on and turn off layers and determine which layers print and which layers are exported. Designers follow rules and place specific objects (text and images) in particular layers.

The bottom layer 4 is the "digital print" layer. This is a layer of objects which may be thought of as the background. It is a static layer and will be printed as is.

There may be one or more "dynamic object" layer 5. Each dynamic object layer 5 includes one or more dynamic objects 8. Every dynamic object 8 is built using the document setup information described above. This concept is illustrated in the enlargement 10 of dynamic object 1 which shows styles 11, swatches 12, and other defined characteristics 13 selected from the pre-defined values which is known as the document setup 14. As will later be described, all objects in the dynamic layer 5 are editable by the on-line end user. They may also be personalizable, that is they may also contain variable data variables.

Logo layer 6 allows the ability to have a different background or digital print layer based on end user selections and discount.

Information layers 7 are non-print layers in InDesign, but provide information to other systems downstream in the process. As will be later described, some of these layers are used to set folding and display characteristics in a three dimensional editor. Other layers can be used to carry video or audio information. These additional layers are used to transfer detailed information to downstream systems.

After a design document is complete, several steps are taken to generate files which will be used to facilitate the present invention. Referring to figure 3, product data is loaded from a local server 20 to a web server 30. This needs to be done only once when each item is loaded to the e-commerce application.

Firstly, a local server based script opens the first of many complete design documents 14 and generates a number of JPEG images 27. These images are uploaded to the web server 30 and loaded into the e-commerce application 31.

Secondly, the design document 14 is exported and an InDesign Interchange (.inx) file is created 28. This .inx file is uploaded to the web server, it is parsed 39 and it is passed into the ecommerce application 31.

Thirdly, typical product information 15, contained in a spreadsheet is uploaded to the e-commerce application 31. This data includes SKU, description, pricing, categories for displaying the item, and links to the associated .jpg images 27, the parsed .inx file 39, and other typical product information which is well known in the field.

Once the data is loaded into storage means such as a hard drive or drive array of the web server 30, web clients 40 can access and use the website served by web server 30 to view, edit, proof and purchase products. A plurality of web end users 42 can access the website simultaneously, although the following description will focus on just a single user. Web clients are computing devices configured to access the web server and would typically be an internet connected personal computer or similar computing device running a web browser.

To prepare and proof a printed article, users access web server 30 by way of their own web clients 40. They are presented with the range of templates on-screen that serve as the starting point for creating their own printed articles. The user selects their preferred template. The template information defining the template is transmitted to the user by being downloaded to the users web client and is displayed on screen by way of editor 47.

Editor 47 renders a three dimensional, interactive representation of the selected item 43 on the web client 40. This editor 47, which resides on the web client, utilizes a presentation language such as Adobe Flash along with a three dimensional representation plug-in such as, for example, PaperVision3D. This is one embodiment of the display, manipulation and three dimensional representation, other web client software and three dimensional representation tools can be used to similar effect.

Referring to figure 4A, editor 47 renders the template information to produce a three dimensional representation of the printed article that is displayed on the screen 50 of the users web client. In figure 4 A, an example of a rendered template is shown in the form of a wedding invitation. The user sees a three dimensional representation of the wedding invitation. In figure 4 A they see the inside of the unfolded invitation and like reference numerals to those used in figure 1 are used to identify the various faces of the card. In figure 4A, the user sees the upper 116 and lower 118 portions of page 2 of the article.

On screen controls are provided that the user may manipulate to proof the printed article. By clicking and dragging arrow 52, user may rotate the representation of the article to see it from any angle. By clicking on either of arrows 54, 56 the user may flip the representation to see either a front or rear view of the article. By clicking on button 58, the article either opens and closes about its central fold line so that the user can understand the visual appearance of the finished article in both states. The article may be flipped or rotated in either of the closed or open state.

Referring to figure 4B, the user has clicked and dragged arrow 52 which has resulted in the representation of the article rotating to offer the user an alternative viewpoint. In figure 4B the user now sees the upper 112 and lower 114 portions of page 1 of the article. It is evident to the user that portion 112 is back to back with portion 118. It is also evident to the user the portion 114 is back to back with portion 116 and that portion 114 is upside down with respect to portion 116. In short, the user is relieved of the task of imagining how the finished article would look.

Should the user wish to make changes, then they may click on the region of the article that they wish to change that correspond to dynamic objects. For instance, in the case of a wedding invitation they may wish to customise details such as names of the bride and groom, the date and location of the wedding, or a verse or other greeting. By clicking on any of these elements in the card, the user is presented with a text box where they may enter their own information. This is stored by the system as user defined information.

Editor 47 includes a storage area 45 which retains information about each dynamic object 44 in a template. The information initially in the storage area are the default values for the dynamic object 44, but as the end user edits the dynamic objects, the storage area 45 updates and retains the users information. The editor 47 displays the updated dynamic object(s) immediately. This real-time editing and displaying of changes in the form of an online real-time proof is completely processed on the web client of the user in the editor 47. There is no need to send the end user edits back to the web server 30, have the server generate a new PDF document, and then download and display this new proof as in the case of some prior art systems.

From time to time, information stored in storage 45 on the end user computer is sent back to the e-commerce application 31 as a way of saving the changes and edits made by the end user. The web end user can view and edit many items 43 each of which can contain many dynamic objects 44 within the editor 47 on their web client. This can occur over several sessions.

When the end user has finished editing and proofing and makes a purchase decision 46 the finalized information from the storage 45 along with typical e- commerce order information (e.g. quantity, address details, shipping details, etc.) is transmitted to be received at the web server and is processed by e-commerce application 31.

Referring to figure 5, at this point the web end user interaction is complete. An item or items with edits has been finalized and processed as "web purchase order 1" 48. This purchase order may contain one or more purchased items 49. Each purchased item may contain one or more edited dynamic objects 130, 131, 132. It contains detailed order data 134 which includes quantity and all of the information needed on an invoice. If there is any variable data to be printed for this item, an associated variable data file 133 will also be included.

All of these items are downloaded to local server 20 to be processed by an automated production system. A script running on the local server 20 detects when a new order has been downloaded from web server 30 and a series of automated processes execute. First the script opens the original design document 135. Next, the original design document has all of its dynamic objects replaced with the modified objects 136. Quantities are determined 138. Finally, the design document has a data merge function applied to it which multiplies the length of the document and integrates the variable merge data 137. This merged, personalized design document is used to generate a PDF 139. The PDF document is imposed onto production print sized paper based on size, dimension, creasing and folding, and treatments to be applied downstream of the printing process 140. Next, overlays are applied to the imposed document which allows further automation in the manufacturing process 141. Finally, the PDF is routed to a hot folder for automated printing based on order characteristics including paper type selected and shape 142. After printing, the order is despatched to the end use according to their specified delivery requirements.

One preferred embodiment of the invention finds applications as an online e- commerce website selling personalized wedding invitations and accessories. The invention has other applications that may include an online e-commerce website selling personalized corporate Christmas cards, event invitations, greeting cards, calendars, invitations to any event, notifications, stationery, marketing materials, mail outs, or personalized printed matter of any kind.

It can be seen that embodiments of the invention have at least the following advantages:

• Allows viewing, editing and generation of a real-time proof on the client (web end-user).

• By processing the edits on the web end-user computer, it is not necessary for the web-server to generate a new proof for every end-user every time they request a proof. Thus, the server processing load on the web-server is reduced.

• The volume of data transferred between the client and the server over the internet is reduced.

• Performance on the client is improved by reducing internet latency.

• It provides a significant enhancement in the online experience allowing the user to get a feel for how the item really looks and works without the need to prepare or mail out samples.

Any reference to prior art contained herein is not to be taken as an admission that the information is common general knowledge, unless otherwise indicated.

Finally, it is to be appreciated that various alterations or additions may be made to the parts previously described without departing from the spirit or ambit of the present invention.