Wegner James Frey Digital Asset Management 24 February 2007 Final Exam 1. Must separate format from content The main reasons for separating format from content are to keep your files organized. It is important to keep youre your content saved only once in a system, for both organization and to save space. If you are repurposing content across many different layouts and including it in all of them, you may have the same file save numerous times on the same server or drive. It is also a good this to do because you can use the same type of layout for multiple different projects. An example of this within the industry would be a company that creates brochures or direct mailers. Many of these firms make more than one piece for each client, and a lot of the content is reused from time to time. If the content is saved
separately from the previous layouts, it makes it easy to go back and find that, instead of searching through multiple layouts to find what you want. On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes companies can reuse layouts for different clients. If they have a layout that is ready to use, they can
drop in any type of content that they want. The best way to put this idea into practice is by using a Content Management System to drag content directly into your
layouts. Most of the systems even have the FPO feature, which allows for fast loading of files. 2. Change Management It is not always easy for a company to incorporate a new DAM system. The learning curve for most of them is fairly
steep, and thats without knowing any of the back-end. I am personally used to the old fashioned way of saving files, so using Xinet for our projects was sort of difficult, but I can see how it would be easier in the long-run. Making sure everyone is on the same page is the most important thing, because without the proper organization, a DAM system does you good. no The best ways to implement this are to make it slow. Do not just incorporate it and make people dive into it all at once. SOPs should be created, so that everyone is following the same guidelines. With so many people having access to a
system, it can quickly turn into a mess. Training is very important, as there are many things that can be overlooked if you are unaware of them. 3. Evolution of storage media Storage media has come an extremely long way just in my lifetime. As far as computer storage is concerned, many options have come and gone. The amount of available storage has increased dramatically, from a couple megabytes to 100s of gigabytes, and thats just in your pocket. Many companies
have multiple terabytes available to them vie server or otherwise. While this is a good thing, it also creates a lot of issues. The more storage you have, the more you have to back up. If a company lost a floppy drive 15 years ago, it was easily replaceable. If a company losses a server nowadays, it could easily put them out of business. Along with the newer technology comes the need for new jobs. IT has only h...