It's tradition among larger universities to produce yearly reports for affiliates and the public. In German these are called Jahrbücher – "year books". Conventionally these are printed publications, bringing with them huge amounts of editorial, design, print, binding and distribution costs. The architecture department at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, DE, asked us to come up with an alternative to this time and money expensive tradition. And we did!
To stay simple and build on existing resources, we decided to modify our well-tested internal CMS to facilitate print output. Basically, we created a print CMS. The administrators (professors, their assistants and some students) fill the system with text and images, drag and drop them into a set of predefined layouts, and assemble these layouts into a printable publication. Using the native browser/OS print interface, a regular 600dpi A3 printer and carefully chosen paper for content and cover, the faculty can this way easily create both year books and smaller brochures at will, very quickly and directly in-house. Since everything is based on already existing interfaces, the publications can just as easily be output as PDFs for purely digital distribution.
Client: Munich University of Applied Sciences – Department of Architecture
