18/01/2017

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Text
Comparison

Text Comparison in Regulated Industries

Pharma Industry
In the Pharma industry there are two standards that are used as Briefs
1. Structured Product Labelling (SPL)followed by the FDA
2. Quality Review of Documents (QRD)followed by the European Medicines Agency

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In the CPG industry there are no such

standards.

In the regulated markets, the SPL content (or extracts from it) are available as a Word
document and this is the brief document given to the designer. The Word Document is
typically a single column file while the PDF version of it from the designer is a multi-column
version. The text flow does not always start from the first column in the PDF. Depending on
the folding pattern of the leaflet or PIL, the text could start at the beginning of the last
column and flow all the way to the first column.
This constant jumping across columns and matching them with text in the PDF file, make
manual proofing cumbersome, tedious and error prone.
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 The QRD content is typically used to share text placed in labels. The placement of text on
the label could be in any direction. The same text in the brief could be placed multiple
times in the label. If the text 5 mg is used thrice in the label, the proof reader has to
make sure its correct in all instances.
When multiple components (label and carton) are prepared for the same SKU, the
designer has to make sure certain text content are the same across both the
components. The Proof reader has to not only check the correctness in one component
artwork, but also make sure the same content is available across multiple components of
the same SKU.
Such requirements make the need forautomated proofinga mandatory thing rather than
a nice-to-have.

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Text Comparison in CPG Industry

With no standards available in the industry, each company has its own formats. However,
there is a common pattern across most of these briefs. They are in one of these formats

1. In the form of a 2 column table in a Word Document. The first column has the names of
the sections (e.g. Ingredients, Nutrition, Manufacturing address, etc.). The second column
has the text against these section titles which the designer will use to cut-and-paste into
the artwork.
2. In the form of a 2 column Excel Document. Its very similar to the Word Document
described in 1, but managed in an Excel file
3. In the form of a Word Document with H1, H2 or H3 headings for the section names. The
text within each heading is used by the designer for creating the label.
4. There are of course variations of the above used by many companies

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Text Comparison in Artwork Management

Allpackaging artworksand labels contain text. This text starts its journey early in the
product design lifecycle and continues to be changed until its printed. The text originates
from different departments, claims text from marketing, nutrition and ingredients text from
formulation and product development, etc. As the product gets closer to launch, the text is
finally given to a design team to place on the artwork.
This handover of text happens in numerous ways, through emails, Word or Excel
documents or structured content in the form of XML in the case of Pharma. The designer
then cuts-and-pastes this content in the appropriate areas in the artwork and adjusts its
font, size and other attributes based on regulatory and brand requirements. The artwork
text along with its design elements are then sent (typically as a PDF file) to multiple
departments for approval.

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 In a global company thousands of Artworks get approved every year in different

languages and in different markets. Most of the text in these artworks are proof-read by
eye-balling the artwork and the brief side-by-side. This is repeated over and over again
every time the artwork is changed. Sometimes people dont have the time nor the
inclination to proof read the text multiple times.
They just trust someone else has done the job right and just approve it without
checking. Most others just check the portions of the artwork where changes were
requested, without realizing that when a designer opens an artwork file to edit, he or
she can introduce errors inadvertently in any part of the artwork.
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 Text proofing toolsnot only take the drudgery out of proofing the text but increases the
accuracy and reduces the time taken to proof read the artwork.
Going through the artwork approval process, the PDF artwork is compared the first time
with the Brief document. In subsequent iterations, the current version of the PDF
artwork is compared with the previous version of the PDF artwork.

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Global References

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