Implementation of the vjoon K4 Publishing system for the NEA to help the editorial and design team collaborate to produce all of the organization's print magazines.
The National Education Association (NEA) is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, committed to advancing the cause of public education. NEA's 3 million members work at every level of education—from pre-school to university graduate programs. NEA has affiliate organizations in every state and in more than 14,000 communities across the United States.
NEA Today magazine is the flagship publication of the NEA. Delivered quarterly to educators nationwide, the publication explores today’s toughest teaching challenges and solutions. Additionally, the organization publishes NEA Today for NEA–Retired Members, NEA Today for Future Educators, Higher Education Advocate, and a number of other distinct titles. Some of the content is shared across publications, but a good deal of content is distinct for each title.
As demand increased with the addition of new titles and more content both in print and in digital editions, the NEA needed to optimize editorial and production workflow. Additionally, NEA needed a way to improve its remote collaboration with Groff Creative, the organization's design and production agency based in Bethesda, MD.
NEA sought a workflow management system that would allow Groff Creative an optimal way to create layouts in InDesign with associated article 'shells' that NEA staff writers and editors could then pass through internal workflow concurrently to Groff's design and production process.
NEA selected vjoon K4, a publishing platform that works in conjunction with Adobe Creative Cloud to allow editors, designers, and production professionals to collaborate more effectively.
Our team gathered requirements for the system, helped identify impediments in the current publishing workflow and offered suggestions on how to improve the process with a K4 status-based workflow. We also helped NEA define its metadata needs across text and image content, as well as the organization's permissions/security model across multiple titles.
We then configured the K4 system in accordance with the publishing requirements, then presented the prototype solution to the publishing staff for feedback. Based on that feedback, our team modified the configuration until NEA staff agreed that it would meet their needs.
Our team provided both K4 system administration and end-user training. We also guided NEA staff in the best practices for creation and usage of InDesign and InCopy templates for standard page layouts to rapidly produce content.
To help ensure a smooth rollout, we provided support to end users, Groff Creative, and NEA system administrators as they produced the first issues of NEA Today using vjoon K4. Additionally we created reference sheets that editorial, design and production staff could use as guides when first learning K4. Thereafter, our team helped NEA refine configurations for all other titles in publication, including NEA Today for NEA–Retired Members and the Higher Education Advocate.
Vjoon K4 provides NEA staff with the much needed visibility into what other team members are working on throughout the editorial production process. The K4 platform is flexible, configurable and scalable, allowing NEA to use the same tools and technology for production of all of the organization's print magazines.
Editorial staff can now work seamlessly with Groff, NEA's design partner, to publish the organization's magazines more efficiently through the use of vjoon K4. We continue to help support NEA with end user and technical support as well as software and feature upgrades of the platform.
