A day in the life of a DTP* Team Leader

Let's say you want to translate a presentation from English into French, keeping the same format and design. What do you do? If it’s a small presentation, you might go with Google translate (not the best option) and invest a lot of time, changing every segment, moving design elements, where is needed.

Well, if you have a 50-slide presentation on a scientific topic, you care about the output and expect to have it translated in the next 48 hours, then definitely you need the help of our DTP power team. They have the necessary skills and talent to transform every tricky document into a readable project.

But what does it take to do that?

Andrian, our DTP Team Leader, is here to explain and reveal some inside secrets.

Many think that DTP are magicians, having the power to make the impossible possible, but in reality, it’s not that simple. All projects are carefully analyzed and processed, taking into account the complexity and timeframe. At first sight, some projects might appear simple, but in the process they turned out to be more complex, or there might be requests from clients that are not feasible at all, but they insist the opposite.

A usual day in DTP looks like this:

I start the day with a coffee, while analyzing all the projects in the system and email. We take into account all new projects that were recently created, but also the ones that remained unfinished from the shift before. All the projects are splited between colleagues by complexity and priority.

During the day, it’s important to check and offer feedback for all the projects that are in progress, so our colleagues know they are on the right track. I also spend a part of my day, consulting the PMs and Sales on how to estimate the right timeframe and quoting. We need to make sure our work is paid fairly by the clients

At the end of the day/night, I double-check the system and my email, making sure that no email remained unanswered and all the unfinished projects have clear requirements and instructions for the next shift.

The most satisfying part at the end of my working day is going to sleep peacefully, knowing that everything was delivered on time and all projects were processed smoothly.

*For those who don’t know, DTP stands for Desktop Publishing.