What happened?

Following is a short explanation of events as they happened. Our awesome server hosts, Mediatemple, had scheduled maintenance on our servers today that was to last about 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, when the server rebooted it did not come back online as expected. It took some time before we realized that something was wrong since we thought that the downtime was due to the maintenance. After about an hour we started investigating and spent about two hours trying to get the server back online. Finally Mediatemples support people came to the rescue and helped us figure out the problem and get the server back to normal.

Again, we apologize for the inconvenience may have caused for people.

To accommodate this new feature we also had to make a few design changes, amongst them - a new login screen. But if you have a keen eye, you'll be able to spot lots of little visual improvements.

Flatplan is an interesting new application that makes it easier for editorial staffers and designers to communicate get on the same page about publication layouts and design.

Read the entire review at Appvita

The strong collaboration features of the app allows you to work with your team on multiple flatplans. You can set a deadline for each Flatplan into Basecamp, and add comments to each page within a flatplan. This make it very useful for companies with a regular publication cycles and deal with quick timelines.

Read the entire review at makeuseof.com

Versioning is a complicated concept for many people and we wanted this to be as simple as possible. Our approach is 'sort of' inspired by Apples Time Machine. It's just there, doing all the work in the background without annoying you while you go about what you do best; planning your publication.

The interface is dead simple. Drag the slider back and forth to see previous versions of your flatplan. If you want to work of the copy you had three days, click the «Make current» button and get cracking.

Speed is important, we know that. We have made several improvements both to the back-end and front-end that is some case speed up page loading across the board.

On the Dashboard at the bottom of each transcript summary you'll find a link that will take you to a page showing you the entire transcript.

A new feature that has been much request is being able to export a flatplan to PDF. This comes in handy if you want to share it with someone without giving them access to your Flatplan account, or maybe you want to burn it on a cd/dvd for safekeeping.

The single most important tool in producing any publication is the flatplan. This ingenious exploded diagram of a publication, similar to a film storyboard, enables everyone involved in its production to see pages, content, print sections or signatures, pagination at a single glance. Flatplans are constantly updated to reflect the inevitable changes that will occur, from a feature that needs to be extended, shrunk or dropped to a specific ad that needs to go opposite a particular editorial page. Such changes will necessitate a rearrangement of a section so that balance and pacing are till maintained throughout the publication. Each time such an alteration or amendment occurs, a new flatplan has be printed out and distributed to keep everyone up to date on developments. (From Yolanda Zappaterra’s Editorial Design)

As a design studio that works with print productions we are always looking for ways to improve the workflow between the content providers and designers. The time spent checking for updates and distributing the flatplan is a reoccurring timesink, and a factor that can create confusion in all productions is the. Editors or studio managers tend to create and muddle through their own «system» using tools like Word, Excel, email and handwritten notes. In the long run this becomes unbearable.

About a year ago we started to look for a product that could fit into our and our clients workflow. Surprisingly, nothing fit the bill. Unable to find a product out there that meet our needs, we started experimenting. Our first two goals was to create something that was simple to read and simple and effortless to edit. Secondly something that lots of people could have open at the same time and asynchronously receive updates as they wore made. What we ended up with was a product simply called Flatplan.

We know from long experience creating magazines and books where to draw the line. Flatplan isn't a production environment with asset management and InDesign plug-ins that break down and stops your entire production. It's simply tool to help you plan, manage and collaborate on your flatplans.

Down the road

We're still working on new features. Not promising anything, and without any eta., here is a short list of things to come:

• Search
• Export to PDF
• Versioning
• Templates
• Stich-ins