Faith shares some tips on how to provide amends and feedback on drafts of creative work.

We know there's always going to be amends on creative drafts and we build in time to cover these of course! But there's some simple, practical ways to make sure that your designers really understand what you mean, and rounds of amends are kept to a minimum. 

1. Think about three key areas: content, accuracy and design, when you're reviewing creative drafts. Ask:

Are all the written and visual elements that you expected to see in the draft included (as occasionally, images or lines of writing may be accidentally cut when being added to the draft)?

Are you completely happy with how the document reads?

Are you happy with how the images and graphical elements in your draft appear?

Are all contact details (telephone numbers, email addresses, web addresses etc) included in your draft are correct?

Are all figures (statistics, quantities etc) included in the draft correct?

Are all references and photography credits correct?

2. If you're marking up PDFs, try to use the correct markup tools; there are specific commenting tools for text deletions, replacements, insertions etc. Sticky notes should ideally be kept for general queries or design changes, as it can be difficult to locate exactly where in the text the amend is. There is helpful advice on the Adobe website: https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/using/commenting-pdfs.html

3. If you're supplying replacement copy for any part of the document, please supply this as a typed version on email or word document and provide the page and paragraph number for each amend (so we’re clear about what we’re amending)

Super practical - but helps to speed the amends process up and get the final result ready for you much quicker!"

Happy amending! Faith