i had already shut down the computer for the night (what! only 8.30!) and was feeling so sorry for myself that i wasn’t even going to make myself a sundae to cheer myself up. fortunately i came to the same conclusion that you did, just then: it is stupid to let abject self pity get in the way of dessert. so here i am, back, with a cup of vanilla green tea and a glass of double chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce and strawberries. i feel better already.
why, apart from the ice cream, am i feeling so crumpled? the spongihead is upon me! and with it, the sneezing, the drippy nose, the mildly throbbing temples, the smarting eyes, the tinge of a sore throat… (so clearly i should not be having this chocolate sauce — so heaty!)
but more aggravatingly…
about a month ago i was offered a job laying out an annual report. at that stage none of the copy had been written, and so based on the calculation that i would need two weeks to design it, and the printers would need two weeks to print it, and the report was needed in about that time, i declined the job.
“that time”, you might have surmised, is now. you are sharp. a couple of weeks ago i was contacted by the editor who’d been hired to pull the report together. she explained that it was in fact a concise 20 page book, and that each page would have essentially the same layout: a small picture, a highlighted quote, and a slab of text. it was a tight schedule, but once the design was sorted ahead of the wednesday copy deadline, the text could be dropped in easily and quickly, and it would be at the printers on friday. today. somehow they’d managed to find some magical printer who’d do the job in 24 hours.
i should have been more wary of this straighforward task when the sample story came through early in the week, and despite having agreed on the style of the report (based on someone else’s annual report they’d seen and liked), the word count was about three (if not four) times the length of what was required. of course, of course you can fit 750 words into an A5 page, with a picture and a headline and a picture caption and a quote. oh yes, of course.
wednesday came, and then thursday, and now friday — printer day! and just right now, 9.13pm, the first half of the text has arrived in my inbox. along the way, i’d been sent reassuring (yet threatening) emails saying things like, “text arriving later today” and “first half of the text arriving tomorrow”, and then the one yesterday afternoon that made me laugh (it was not a pretty laugh):
“I will have half text pages for you tonight.
Images tomorrow.
Financials over the weekend.
Aim for printer Monday depending on the time you need…??…”
on top of all that, the book has grown to 36 pages.
on top of that, this is one of the sentences in the 36 pages:
“While one of the positives of this project was that the participants were the center of the project, and they were driving it artistically, because it was their lived experience and there were so many big issues that they had a strong desire to deliver them.”
but wait! this is the next sentence:
“The process was cathartic and emotionally difficult for the filmmakers, but highly rewarding to create something which has a broader reach than their own communities.”
i’m the graphic designer though, right? i should just typeset it 8.2/11.5pt and leave it at that. it’s just, i can’t. i sit here, reading while i lay it out, and maybe this is what’s causing my face to hurt.
but, haha, this is where i say, “HAHA! i have fooled you, you april fool!”.
but, no. alas it is only 31 march.
i am so grumpy. and my ice cream is gone.
3 Comments
But really, I don’t see what your problem is. I mean, typesetting is nothing, right? Don’t you just drop the text in and go?
This is the running joke between me and a friend with whom I once set a huge e-textbook using the most horrible, ill-considered beta e-book software, for which we seemed to be the only testers. We didn’t pick it; the client insisted we use it. So there we were tearing our hair out because this software didn’t have any way no make style sheets, and we had to manually style every fricking piece of text in the whole thing–hundreds of highly formatted textbook pages–and there was their documentation which said the software was so easy to use, you could just take some text and “drop it in and go.” Aaaaargh! So that entered the script. That and the fact that nobody knows what typesetting entails. “So, do you get to choose the fonts?” is the other thing we say all the time.
At my current job, we also like to say that we are going to just “knock out” some 300-page book of nothing but math equations, as that is what our production manager always says: “Could you knock this out by tomorrow morning?” Yeah, that’s EXACTLY what it’s like. I’ll just knock my head against the desk a couple of times, and then I’ll no longer mind.
In short, I feel your pain. Your sundae sounded good, though. We don’t usually get those in our office.
Oh dear. Very sorry for your predicament. Brings back vivid memories 🙂
Heh. My staff have noted that when they send me documents for approval, it gets returned with the layout all cleaned up. It drives me batty having to look at documents with inconsistent formatting – different fonts and sizes and line spacing…. the horror! And they also said that I always make grammar corrections, even though I’m supposed to just check for compliance. Hahahah.