Skills Needed for VDP

For the average trade printer, there has been no such thing as “easy VDP”. If there is any doubt about this, see the 109-page paper from College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Designing for Digital: Skill Sets Needed to Design for Variable Data*.

The paper's author, Jessica Jordan, puts it this way,

“Eventually, designers will need to be familiar with the skills of a marketer, programmer, database analyst, and printer. The following list of skill sets for designers of VDP has been identified ...

• Information, knowledge, and experience in VDP
• Networking and system integration skills
• Business and marketing awareness
• Image, color management, and asset management skills
• Text manipulation and process skills
• Knowledge of programming skills
• Database administration
• Proper preparation and data-mining skills
• General design skills
• Proper layout for addressing VDP pieces
• Proper coding being placed along mailing address
• USPS rules and mailing penalties
• Cross-media development skills

In summary, …one possible reason for the delay in growth for VDP, was that designers do not have adequate training or skills needed for VDP.”

The paper’s conclusions are on the mark. However, developing or staffing for all of these skills is not practical for the average print shop. The paper focuses on how printers acquire these skills in-house but does not address the potential of outsourcing the work needed to create VDP print files for in-house printing.

Ta-Da!

*The full paper is available here: https://ritdml.rit.edu/bitstream/handle/1850/10895/35274_pdf_707B6614-DF7A-11DE-A4BD-8F409E1A67F9.pdf?sequence=1