Bill Grant started his business in 1989 with asimple formula for success: surround yourselfwith great people and great tools. His approachhas paid off. Today, Grant Design Collaborative(GDC) creates strategic brand design programsfor some of the world’s leading commercialfurnishings companies and organizations:Herman Miller, Steelcase, Blue Ridge CommercialCarpet, and the Association for Contract Textiles.Good Design Is Good BusinessGrant Design Collaborative discovers how Adobe® InDesign®software fosters a better design process and productSUCCESS STORYe company has become best known for its ownbranded interiors, which have garnered the Interna-
tional Interior Design Association’s Creative Excel-
lence Award and been covered in publications such
as Interior Design, I.D. Magazine, and Interiors.GDC now offers its clients everything from corporatebrand identity development to print collateral andWeb sites. e firm’s client base has expanded to in-cluded non-furnishings companies like Mohawk Paper
Mills; the City of Canton, Ohio; and Smart Papers.Increasing ROI for clients Bill Grant himself is a recognized design visionary.As a national board member of the American Instituteof Graphic Arts (AIGA), Grant helped develop
the “Designing” initiative that has become AIGA’s
central focus. e initiative promotes the value of the
design process, rather than solely on the individual
designers and their work. Spearheading the initiative
is a natural for Grant, who has spoken widely on the
process of design and what it means to designers and
their clients. “I’m passionate about the intersection
of business and design, and about how designers can
increase clients’ return on investment,” says Grant.Grant has put careful thought into how designers
think and work. He has documented and archived
case studies of exceptionally successful designs, and
spent time investigating tools that can help design-
ers do their jobs better. “I always want to be at the
forefront, exploring technical issues before clients
do,” says Grant. “In my experience, a beautiful
design process leads to a beautiful design product.”Making designers’ hearts beat faster e desire to improve the design process at GDC ledGrant to Adobe InDesign soware. Aer reading
product reviews, he immediately recognized that
InDesign could help improve both creativity and
productivity at the firm, thereby promoting a better
design product.Designers at GDC were initially reluctant to try a
new soware program, but aer a day’s worth oftraining from Adobe, they were enthused about the
capabilities in InDesign not found in other page
layout soware, such as support for OpenType® fonts,
sophisticated typographical tools, and transparency.
Most designers were comfortable using the soware.“Everyone here shares a love for typography, so thestrong typographical tools and support for Open-Type fonts in InDesign were big selling points for us,”says Grant. “row in transparency and other func-
tionality not found in most page layout programs,
and our hearts really began to beat faster.”Achieving the impossible One of the first projects the firm undertook using
InDesign was a poster for AIGA promoting Grant’s“Process is!” presentation. GDC experimentedwith several layouts for the poster using the trans-
parency capabilities in InDesign, which allowed
the designers to create a piece that was completely
different from anything else they had ever done.“Before InDesign, experimenting with transparencyand overlapping shapes was too difficult and time-
consuming because of the way other page layout
programs handle graphics,” says Grant.e ease of moving between Adobe InDesign,Illustrator®, and Photoshop® soware streamlined the
project. GDC brought the logo and artwork directly
from Illustrator and Photoshop into InDesign, where
the designers were able to manipulate the files. e
team exported files directly from InDesign to Adobe
Portable Document Format (PDF) for proofing and
efficiently collected linked files for output using
the package command. High-resolution preview in
InDesign also saved production time. “We caught an
overprint problem before going to prepress, saving
us substantial time and money,” says Grant.One of the first projects the Grant Design
Collaborative undertook using InDesign
was a poster for the American Institute
of Graphic Arts (AIGA) promoting Bill
Grant’s “Process This!” presentation. The
transparency capabilities in InDesign
allowed the designers to create a piece
that was completely different from
anything else they had ever done.“Everyone hereshares a love
for typography,
so the strong
typographical
tools and support
for OpenType
fonts in InDesignwere big sellingpoints for us.”Bill Grant,
President and Creative Director,
Grant Design CollaborativeAdobe Systems Incorporated • 345 Park Avenue, San Jose, CA 95110-2704 USA • www.adobe.comAdobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, and Tools for the New Work are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems
Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Apple and Power Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the United States and other
countries. OpenType is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. © 2004 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. 95002916 1/04The future of page layout GDC subsequently used InDesign to create a pro-
motional piece called the Grant Design Collabora-
tive Product Manifesto. Because content was at the
forefront of the piece, GDC used simple yet exacting
typography throughout. With the optical kerning
feature in InDesign, the team zoomed in at more
than 1500% to ensure precise kerning of multiple
typefaces within the same sentence. “InDesign let us
really concentrate on the finer details of typography
and design,” says Grant.Since using InDesign for the AIGA poster and its
own promotional piece, GDC has adopted InDesign
as its preferred page layout solution. Not only do
InDesign files print reliably, but designers say that
InDesign also lets them be more precise and creative,
while increasing GDC’s return on investment through
enhanced productivity.In using InDesign to create the Grant
Design Collaborative Product Manifesto,
the GDC team took advantage of thesoftware’s optical kerning feature,
zooming in at more than 1,500% to
ensure precise kerning of multipletypefaces within the same sentence.A strong believer that good design is good business,Grant vows that InDesign enhances the capabilities
and efficiency of his own business, and has the poten-
tial to improve other designers’ businesses as well.“InDesign is the future of page layout, and I knowthat people are becoming more interested in it every
day,” says Grant. “Once you try the typography and
other great tools within InDesign and see how its
capabilities can enhance your own work, you become
hooked and never want to go back.”CompanyGrant Design Collaborative
Canton, GA
www.grantcollaborative.comChallengeIncrease creativity and productivity.SolutionUse advanced features like typo-graphy and transparency in Adobe InDesign software and leverage its
integration with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.BenefitsGDC is creating more innovative
work than ever before while
achieving a return on investment.Tool Kit• Adobe Acrobat®• Adobe Illustrator• Adobe InDesign• Adobe Photoshop• Apple Power Macintosh G4 computer“InDesign is thefuture of page
layout, and I
know that people
are becomingmore interested
in it every day.”Bill Grant,
President and Creative Director,
Grant Design Collaborative

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