To most people, April 30 is another day, but for me, it represents a milestone for the Colecandoo site – 10 years since the site was launched.

Unusual beginnings

While the first post Colecandoo was published on April 30 2011, the idea for the site started its life in the year 2001 while working at Mac and PC Digital as a prepress operator for the busy service bureau. The company’s web page had been amended to include a bulletin board, and one of the topics on the board was Need Help Pre-Press. Feeling somewhat frustrated with the usual errors seen by clients, I posted – under a pseudonym – an article to the board highlighting what not to do when submitting files.

Days later, I was approached by the boss about the post. While I initially denied writing the post, he knew it was me, and made the comment that there was some great information that was presented, though was unimpressed by the tone of the post.

Willing to overlook this, he suggested turning my frustration into clients’ education, and rewrite the post into a series of smaller posts providing practical advice on best practices. I obliged, and when other issues arose that I felt clients should be aware of, I would add them to the posts.

Colecandoo could have been a book

Despite leaving Mac and PC Digital to work for Gillingham Printers, I kept writing notes about issues that I thought others should be aware of, conscious that there was very little literature in the marketplace for prepress advice. As I gained knowledge with my new employer, more information was added to my collection, and I was confident that I could curate the information into a book that I felt had a potential market.

Though one observation remained true – the industry was always changing, and information that could be published in one print-run of the book would quickly be out of date. Quark’s domination gave way to the rise of InDesign and the Creative Suite, Freehand was deprecated, and PDF became the way of submitting artwork for printing.

Given this rate of change, a book was deemed the wrong media to prepare this information… but I wanted to get my advice out there, one way or another.

The plunge

Seeing the success of sites such as indesignsecrets and indiscripts, I felt that the best platform for the information I had was to create a website – not to compete with these sites, but to complement their material with what I felt was finer detail on specific information.

On 30 April 2011, the first posts were published to Colecandoo. Many of the first posts related to the handover of files, such as formats that could be accepted; missing deadlines; and even simple things such as labelling disks and CDs… oh how times have changed.

Then it happened…

In early 2013, interest in the Colecandoo site would turn my world upside-down. I was contacted by InDesignSecrets whether I would be interested in writing an article about Data Merge for InDesign Magazine. Since then I’ve written a few more pieces for the magazine, along with close to 30 articles for InDesignSecrets, and spoken at two conferences in an official capacity (as well as unofficially at CreativeWOW sessions and Ignite sessions).

Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to provide advice and assistance to dozens of businesses, including international advertising agencies, Ivy League universities, federal government agencies, and several major franchises.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to speak to Adobe Software Engineers directly, and through support of readers of the site, I’ve been able to do this several times – something I didn’t think I’d ever do when starting the site ten years ago.

Passion Project

For those that aren’t aware, maintaining this site is not my full-time job – my full-time job is as a prepress operator for Openbook Howden Print & Design in Adelaide. That said, everything that is published on the Colecandoo site itself or its social media channels such as the Colecandoo Youtube channel – is done by me. From my perspective, I see the articles on this site as my way of giving back to the community.

My sincere thanks

My thanks go out to everyone who has supported the site, whether that is as simple as visiting the site now and again to see what has been written; or liking and subscribing to the Colecandoo Youtube channel; or purchased the Data Merge to Single Records PRO script.

Finally, thank you for a fantastic ten years, and look forward to many more years to come.