Document Production Service
Contents
Introduction
Here at Aardstorm we can produce documents for you in a wide variety of formats, both electronic and on paper. These can be put together from text and pictures, or other graphics, that either you supply to us, and optionally editted by us through our editorial service, or that we have produced for you through our research, authoring and picture services. We can also simply convert a document that you supply to us to a different format. The sort of documents we can produce include:
- A summary report, in either electronic form or on paper, for your own use.
- One or more pages for your website.
- An informative article for distribution across the internet, perhaps to help promote your website.
- A detailed report, brochure or booklet, in either electronic or paper from, for distribution within your organisation or externally.
- An electronic presentation, either in Powerpoint format, or as a DVD slide show, optionally complete with audio commentary and background music.
If you require a paper document with more than a few copies, or with high printing quality requirements, then we can also liase with commercial printing services to produce your documents.
This service is primarily concerned with the production of text-oriented documents, although such documents may also contain many pictures or other graphics; for the production of more graphically-oriented documents, such as posters or advertisements please see our picture services.
The rest of this page describes our document production service in more detail, including the range of standard document types that we can produce for you, details of the information we will need from you to complete your document, and a description of how we will produce your document. See our fees summary page for details of our standard charges for this service.
Information Sources
The text to be incorporated into your document can come from a variety of sources:
- You can supply it to be used as is, with no modification beyond formatting changes necessary to incorpoorate it into your document.
- You can supply it for further editting and correction by us through our editorial service, to ensure accuracy and consistency of spelling and grammar, etc., prior to its inclusion in your document.
- You can supply information in one or more documents that is to be rewritten by us through our authoring service to produce your final document.
- You can commission us to find information about a specific topic through our research service, and then write it up using our authoring service to produce your final document.
We can also simply convert another document that you supply into a different format, with minimal modification beyond that necessary to achieve the format conversion.
We can also illustrate your new document with pictures or other graphics. Again the pictures can either be supplied by yourself, or you can commission us to locate or create suitable pictures through our Picture Service.
In all of these cases, where you supply us with text or pictures for incorporation into your document, we can accept your source document(s) and/or pictures in a wide variety of elecronic formats – if the file can be read by one of the components of the Microsoft Office (2003) or Adobe Creative Suite (CS3) program suites, then we can accept it. We can also accept your source information on paper or film (35mm negatives or transparencies only), but if these are to be included directly in the documents we produce for you, then additional scanning and transcription charges will also apply. Small amounts of information in electronic form can be supplied to us as e-mail attachments, otherwise it is better to send the information to us on CD or DVD ROM, or direct us to a website of yours from which we can download it.
Document Types
We can produce a wide range of documents for you, in either electronic or paper format. This section describes some of the more common document types that we can produce; if you have a requirement for a type of document that is not described here, we can probably also produce it for you, please contact us for a quotation. When requesting a quotation from us for a document, whether or not it is one of our standard types, please describe as fully as possible the document you require, including the depth and breadth of information it is to contain, its intended target audience, how it is to look, what format it is to be produced in, and how many copies we are to produce.
Simple Report
This document type is intended to complement our research service, so that we can fully report to you the information that we have found. It could, however also be used to commission us to produce a summary of a set of documents that you supply to us. For this type of document, we will summarise or explain the information that we have found (or you have supplied) to the level of detail that you request. This document type is also primarily intended to be read by yourself, or others in your organisation, rather than for distribution or publication to third parties.
Website Page
This document type is intended to complement our website design and implementation services, to allow you to commission us to produce some or all of the text for your site rather than providing it yourself, although we can also provide pages for use on a site designed by somebody else. For this type of document we will produce one or more web pages to your requirements from information you supply to us in other forms. These pages would typically be used to promote or describe your business or organisation, and/or its products or services.
Web Article
Although generally similar to the general web pages described above, a web article is primarily informative rather than promotional. This document type can therefore be produced from information located using our research service, as well as from information you supply to us. The resulting article could be included in your website (whether developed by us or by others), or it could be distributed across the web for inclusion in other sites or e-zines, to help promote your site and improve its search engine ranking.
Booklet, Brochure or eBook
This type of document can also be based either on information you supply to us, or that we locate for you through our research service. We can produce a brochure or booklet for you, of the length you require, and about almost any topic, for distribution to your target audience. It can also be either informative, educational or promotional in nature. We can produce it in electronic form, as an eBook, or on paper, or both.
Presentation
As well as the text-oriented documents described above, we can also produce presentation type documents, consisting of a series of 'slides' , each containing a combination of text and /or graphics, intended to be presented to an audience in sequence. We can produce such presentations either in Microsoft Powerpoint format, or as a standard video DVD. In both cases, we can also add backgorund music and/or an audio commentary, and provide accompanying materials for distribution to your audience. The audio commentary can be provided by yourselves, or we can record it for you, while the background music will be recorded by us from public domain sources using a professional workstation synthesiser. We can also include video clips provided by you in your presentation.
Design & Production
Once we have produced or been provided with all of the text and pictures to be included in your final document, we will design it to your requirements, using an attractive layout of text and pictures appropriate for its intended output format
Once we have written the document to your specification, we can supply it to you in a variety of electronic formats appropriate to the document type. As with your input information, if the file format can be produced by any of the component programs of the Microsoft Office (2003) or Adobe Creative Suite (CS3) packages, then we can supply your document in that format. Small files can be shipped to you as e-mail attachments, otherwise (or at your request) we will ship the files on CD or DVD ROM.
We can also design your document to be produced on paper. We can supply a limited number of copies from our own colour laser printer, for example for proofing purposes or for your own internal use or distribution. If you require a larger number of copies, or a higher output print quality, then we can liase with a commercial printing service to produce them for you, or we can supply the necessary files for you to supply to your own printing service. If you require your document to be professionally typeset, then we can also liase with a commercial typesetting service, and proofread the results for you, marking up any errors using the standard British Standard symbols.
Production Process
The process used by Aardstorm to design and produce a document to your requirements will normally consist of the following steps:
1. Request Quotation
You request us to supply a quotation for the design and production of your document. At this point you need to supply us with sufficient information about your requirements for us to accurately estimate the work involved in producing your document. This will include such information as:
- The type of document required, and its intended final production format.
- Who is to produce the text and pictures or other graphics required for your document, and if you are supplying them to us, an indication of their quantity, format, and extent of modification required.
- Any requirements you have for how the document is to look, such as colour schemes and text font specifications.
- How many copies of the document we are to produce for you.
If you are also commissioning any of our other services to assist in the production of your document, then you should also state your requirements for these too.
2. Supply Quotation
On receipt of your request, we will use the information you supply about your requirements to estimate the amount of work and other costs involved for us to produce your document. If anything about your requirements is unclear, we will request clarification from you. We will then produce a firm quotation and send it to you. This will include a firm price and schedule for the work to be done (subject to no significant changes to your requirements), together with a summary of your requirements so that you can check that we have understood your request.
3. Place Order
If you accept our quotation, and decide to commission us to produce your new document, you then place a firm order, and pay a deposit of 50% (less if stage payments have been agreed) of the total document and picture service fees, plus 100% of any third party fees. At this point you need to also supply us with the full text, pictures, and other graphics to be included in your document, or used as a basis for its production.
4. Produce Document Content
If you have commissioned us to produce any of the text or pictures to be incorporated into your document through our research, authoring, editorial or picture services, then this is when we will produce them. Depending on the length and complexity of your document, completion of some or all of these services may trigger an intermediate approval and/or stage payment phase, when we will supply you with preliminary results of our work for your approval, along with our invoice for a stage payment. We will not then proceed with further work on your document until we receive your approval and payment.
5. Produce Final Document
Once we have received, or produced to your satisfaction, all necessary text and pictures, etc. for your document, we will design your final document, and fill it with the text and pictures. We will then supply you with a preliminary copy of your document, usually in electronic form (even if your document is to be produced on paper), for your approval. We will also at this point send you our invoice for the remainder of the fees due.
6. Approval
You should then carefully check the document that we have produced to ensure that it contains no errors, and meets your requirements. We will correct any errors against your original requirements free of charge. However, if you now require something different, we will be happy to accommodate your changes, but will charge you extra for the additional work involved - we will provide you with a quotation, and will only proceed with your changes once you have accepted the revised fees. Once you are satisfied with our work, you then pay the remainder of our fees.
7. Final Production
Once we have received your payment, we will produce the necessary final copies, or master files, of your document, and supply them to you. If after this you require any further copies of your document, beyond those we were originally commissioned to supply, you are welcome to place a repeat production order with us.
Communication
Throughout the document production process, communication between us will normally be via e-mail; you will therefore need to supply us with a valid e-mail address that we can use to contact you. If you require one or more face-to-face meetings, we will be happy to visit you, but will charge extra for the travelling and subsistence costs incurred.
Copyright & Licensing
We will take great care not to infringe anybody else's copyright when producing your document. If you supply us with text or pictures to be included in your final document, with or without modification, then you must have sufficient licence to the copyright in those materials to be able to authorise us to use them in your document. If they were orginally produced by yourself or employees of your organisation, then your organisation will most likely own the copyright will therefore easily be able to authorise us to use them in the way that you require. If, however, they were produced by somebody else, including under sub-contract from your organisation, then the copyright could well still be owned by the original author and you will need to check what rights you have to use them.
If you require us to incorporate into your final document significant parts of other documents that we have found for you through our research service, such as pictures, charts, tables of data, or exerpts of text of more than few words, then we will be happy to liase with the copyright holder on your behalf to obtain permission to use the material in the way that you require. Any licensing fees arising out of this negotiation will be passed on to you. Alternatively, we can pass on the copyright holder's details on for you to obtain the necessary permission yourself.
We also normally retain the copyright in all our work, and our standard licence only covers documents that are either to be distributed internally within your organisation, or distributed free of charge to your customers or clients; you will be able to make as many copies of our work as you like for these purposes, or we can supply additional copies for additional reproduction fees. If you intend to sell the documents we produce for you, then you will also require some form of production licence from us. Please contact us with details of your requirements (or include them with your request for quotation) to negotiate the additional fees for this.