The PDF is such a misunderstood creature at it heart and I think sometimes that its a victim of its own sheer versatility, meaning it's employed in totally different ways depending at which end of the sharp stick you work at. Used in a creative production environment as the spiritual successor to the 'Collect for Output' it wraps up all the elements of a particular artwork project and joins everything together in a single (in theory) bullet-proof file. If you ever worked in pre-press like I did then the constant battle against shabbily supplied Quark files (no fonts, low-res images, missing links, incompatible versions etc.) is virtually a thing of the past - assuming you know the ins and outs of exporting a properly usable PDF (which admittedly many do not).

To the account manager or marketing executive the PDF is a method of accessing a digital version of a proof which negates the need for expensive and time consuming printing processes. It's a small, neat and very friendly way of accessing artwork on the hop and requires nothing in the way of technical expertise to access. The highly trained marketing guru need only club their mouse at the PDF icon with the dexterity of a half-cut, Mexican, bed-ridden, morbidly obese simpleton to open the preview in all its glory. For the slightly better informed or brave marketing team, there is even an impressive array of mark-up tools that can be used to enrich the communication process between them and the designers to an incredible extent. Again, if like me you have worked in a studio environment on amends to a document provided by account managers in hand-written form - which often resemble the English homework of a hyper-active (but dim) 5 year old, sporting a broken biro and an even younger sister who likes to scribble all over her brothers English homework - then you'll recognise immediately the benefits of digital mark-up.

The thing to remember with PDFs is whilst proofing and distribution of press-ready artwork is essentially what the format was developed for, PDFs can actually do so much more. Quite often our clients ask us to do a word template for them after we have completed a branding exercise including letterheads. The fact is you can set up an iPDF with a text box capable of rich text formatting - which is also saveable right from Reader. The benefit of this is that the client cannot accidentally wreck the artwork and therefore diminish the brand they've just paid to establish. The fonts, logos and positioning will all stay legit and as God (me or Andy) intended forever more, no matter what the system. We often produce sales tools, order forms, data-capture forms and so-on which historically were put together with limited success in Word. In these case the iPDF offers the client so much versatility in terms of pure functionality and also leaves department heads safe in the knowledge sales reps, or front-end staff cannot inadvertently change or corrupt key points of information (such as an offer or price point). Fields are filled in by the recipient in situ and the completed fields can be added, multiplied, subtracted, emailed, transferred, stored, compiled - all automatically. Don't use Word - it's just not good enough and Bill Gates has had enough money.

Recently we have been putting lots of PowerPoint presentations together on behalf of various clients and even other studios and we are by this stage specialists in this area. Despite the fact that PowerPoint is a clunky, ugly, slow, annoying, unpredictable beast of a software package - we have mastered it and are still able to offer value to our clients using it. The thing is that just like Word, PowerPoint just doesn't really cut it compared with a properly constructed iPDF and we'd really like to underline to anyone thinking of doing a presentation in this way the reasons they should consider changing approach.

A presentation created as iPDF has all of the transitional options and so on, but offers the following advantages;
> The PDFs are compressed and lightweight, making them ideal to transfer electronically
> They run faster
> Security can be added to the document to prevent accidental changes to core information
> PDFs can be marked up by the users centrally with comments and amendments throughout the process
> The document using the creative suite software which ensures the maximum level of quality
   - From a practical point of view it makes updating the document easier and faster as style sheets can be applied
   - Document elements can easily be re-appropriated for other uses eg. printed brochures
   - It'd be easier to implement future editions
> Fonts can be embedded, eliminating cross-platform issues
> Almost everyone has a PDF reader installed by default and if not - it's FREE
> There are some advanced features which can be incorporated such as;
   - An array of transitions
   - Silent printing
   - Menu systems
   - Navigation
   - Bookmarks
   - Linking
   - Web site Integration
   - Rollovers
   - Hyperlinks
   - Shadow/lightboxes
   - Data Capture
   - Interaction (eg. Forms, quizzes, questions, choices)
   - Animation
   - Video (without pulling your hair out)
   - Sound/Music
   - Flash
   - Javascript
   - Silent Printing
   - and loads more...