Layout Champ and CCI

At our newspaper, we're about to switch to CCI and pages will be designed with Layout Champ. I'd be interested in hearing from people who have experience with both. I've heard Layout Champ isn't nearly as good as Quark.

 

Layout Champ is like learning how to drive a Lamborghini. In six months, once it's second nature, you'll love it. But while you're learning, trust me, you'll be jonesing for Quark.

 

People with strong Quark backgrounds hate it at first. But if you unlearn Quark stuff, you get used to it.

It's not the easiest application to be creative in, but it makes the day-to-day stuff very easy. And the tools are there to make fancy stuff, it just takes longer. What you sacrifice in user-friendliness is made up for with the power to (eventually) do almost anything.

CCI also makes it much easier for text and design people to work together. Unless, like at my current place, everyone refuses to learn how the damn thing actually is supposed to work. Everyone here has the same workflow they had in the ATEX days, which is just idiotic.

 

I learned layout on InDesign. I just switched to a CCI/Layout Champ paper. I've never used Quark.

The first few days of using Layout Champ were tough and I had to have other deskers pretty much walk me through my page. Now that I'm used to it, I like Layout Champ better. I like how you design the article shape then fill them in with the head, deck, byline and other article elements. I used to waste a lot of time in InDesign making sure the spacing was correct, and Layout Champ takes care of most of that. At my new place I do inside pages. If I wanted to do something creative for a cover or spread, right now, I'd still rather do it in InDesign, since I only know the basics of Layout Champ.

 

i fuckin' hate layout chump and fuckin' cci. fuck the danes

there is zero room for error, experimentation or creativity (of course, it could be the tandy 200s we have in our office that they try to run that shit on... seriously, they have disc drives. seriously)

 

I don't know anything about CCI, but I know Quark sucks compared to InDesign.

 

Layout Champ works better for inside pages, template pages and for editors who aren't especially creative designers (or whose primary task is editing). It's a challenge to be especially creative on cover Layout Champ packages, but it is much easier to update between editions.

 

CCI was conceived to facilitate the publication of phone books.

Enough said.

 

I have nothing to add to this besides this: Layout CHAMP? Really? What do the reporters work in? Copy Buddy?

 

good one.

 

I think the problem with layout champ is that it was designed, as many here have said, for the mundane, inside pages. You want to get creative, then learn how to manpulate the system to do what you want it to do, and start by turning off the artical adjust outlines. Once you learn how to use it, it becomes as easy as using quark, easier in fact. No more squaring things up, no more lining columns up, it does it all for you. Once you learn how to use it, you'l probably like it. Not to mention the fact you have a leg up on anyone applying for a job in a newsroom using CCI. of which they are many (and growing)

 

I consider CCI to be the Rolls Royce of layout programs and I basically think it has everything I have ever wanted in a layout program. Once you get the hang of it, you seem to get your work done much quicker and it is smoother.
Of course, every designer in my newspaper group had 7 full days of training on the program. That helped ease the transition.