Time Out Sydney - Integrated Web and Print Production

Objectives: Time Out required an easy system for managing large amounts of content in a single system that stored content for both the magazine and website

• Use an output neutral data store and create web transformations for online and XML outputs for print publications
• All content for the magazine is entered by the content producers eg writers and editors
• After approval the content is manipulated via scripts onto the website and via XML into a layout program (Adobe InDesign)

Time Out Sydney needed a cost effective and technically easy way to manage a vast amount of content on a weekly basis. The content had to be able to be easily created and managed digitally by a user group that was not overly technically savvy. Freestyle Media coded the new website in such a way that a series of simple check boxes leads to more complex pages (section pages and the homepage) be constructed automatically on an issue by issue basis. In addition a simple events database was constructed that is also populated on a weekly basis by the magazine editors themselves, thus reducing the web production lead time.

The real success of the project was that the databases also had attached to them powerful XML outputs that were constructed in such a way that they could be read by the layout program- Adobe Indesign. In this way the magazine is built in much the same way as a website from the same data. This saves versioning issues and production time. Time Out is looking to roll out this system in other capital cities within Australia.