New boss is affecting my productivity by forcing me to design documents as impositions in illustrator because he doesn’t “trust” the pdf that InDesign exports to be imposed correctly by the press we use. Anyone else had their hands tied like this?

New boss is affecting my productivity by forcing me to design documents as impositions in illustrator because he doesn’t “trust” the pdf that InDesign exports to be imposed correctly by the press we use. Anyone else had their hands tied like this?

Hello, so the designing of this doc as an imposition is just one thing. This is the first 28 page doc we’ve produced so far, and this one he is okay with me using InDesign because of how many pages. Any and all other documents, he wants designed as impositions in illustrator, this goes up to 8 page docs. But the way he wants the indd set up for the 28 pager is as an imposition, page 1 is page 28, page 2 is page 1, page 3 is page 27, page 4 is page 2 and so on...

This is, in his eyes, to cut out any possibility of a mistake due to the press... which makes no sense to me, but whatever, biting the bullet... That’s just one unique preference this boss has.

When I was hired ~2 months ago, we talked in detail about how I’m comfortable with InDesign, but am also very well versed in Illustrator and Photoshop, and that I have prepress experience from the newspaper I was with for two years.

He seemed quite positive about the whole thing, interested and excited even because I was (and am) confident that InDesign is the right tool for almost everything we do. His preference is to do everything in Illustrator, which while possible, takes a fair amount longer to use because it’s not specifically built for these kind of projects, like InDesign is. But now, it’s like the fact that I think the projects almost all call for InDesign just irritates him because he can’t see my “logic” as to why it should be done in InDesign.

He is affecting my productivity by several times having me redesign a 4 or an 8 page document in Illustrator that I had already finished in InDesign. Why? He just says he doesn’t get it, and that they’ve always done it in Illustrator so I should just use illustrator. Ugh... fine... but, throughout those redesigns, he kept getting after me about taking too long to do these projects...

Yeah, they took me longer than expected, but that’s because a bunch of bullshit shape dividing that occurs when bringing elements from InDesign cs6 into illustrator cs6 (he thinks the upgrade to CC is “more of a want than a need” as I was told), so I have to ungroup everything and move each element over one by one. Or just give up and redesign everything in Illustrator... either way, time wasted because he doesn’t trust that the press will know what to do with an 8 page pdf from InDesign...

So I’ve been forced to just shut my mouth for fear of my job as he gets increasingly frustrated, and to just do things in this way that I think is entirely counter-intuitive to the whole process. I also think that with this kind of design (many expensive locksmith industry specific items that I’m almost completely unfamiliar with, categorized in orders based on item numbers and system codes and stuff that I’m still learning) is opened up to way more errors by designing with the document set up as an imposition.

Am I being arrogant with my own preferences? Is this something that I should put up a stink about, or should I just keep my head down and hope he chills out (unlikely)? Am I right that if this is all because he doesn’t trust the press to do it right, that we should go to a different printer?

Any thoughts are appreciated, even if it’s that I’m being a jackass...

TL:DR Marketing head hired me to be his designer, at the beginning he encouraged me to use InDesign because I had told him that it was my preference for the type of work. He now has flipped because he doesn’t see my “logic” about using InDesign and is forcing me to use Illustrator for projects that will suffer because of it. Also wants everything designed as a “print ready imposition” because he doesn’t trust our press to order the pages correctly from a standard pdf.

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