Friday, November 9, 2012

Holiday Heart

Another big gap in the blog entries, but I've been really busy this time around: The ASC Handbook redesign got interesting when the publisher Martha asked me to finalize the chapter files for her. One big change has happened: we went to full color, as all those black and white diagrams and illustrations have to be colorized at least a bit, since black and white looks really ugly sitting on a color page.

Problem is, whoever put together the diagrams (especially the camera-threading diagrams) made them up of hundreds of little line segments instead of creating closed shapes. This means now I get to go back and connect all those little lines in order to fill them with color, or find other ways to cheat. It's still taking hours, and there are about 60 diagrams to deal with: most are fairly simple, but others are a real nightmare. But, beyond the tables and charts, these are the last big hurtle I've got in the publication, and I'm hoping we'll get the thing done by the end of the year.

The Pasadena Chamber of Commerce Business Directory started in earnest this last month, and that has been taking a good chunk of my time and attention. The ad work on it is a lot more than I thought it would be. With a supposed deadline of November 26, they're still out selling ads, which makes the layout of the magazine change every time they sell anything of substance. Add to that the fact that no one has the ad files from last year, and a good two-thirds of the ads are reprints. I finally got ahold of the designer from last year's directory; he has the ad files and is going to send them over to me.

This is not the end of it, though: I also have to put together e-mail proofs of each ad that comes in and send it off to the advertisers for final approval. A lot of them aren't responding. And of the one or two ads that I'm building, the advertisers are just not talking to me. I know now why I didn't go into design for sales and marketing: it's too crazy.

So there are two very nutsy jobs to work on, one with a deadline that's getting way too close way too fast, and I am swearing to myself that I am not going to spend Thanksgiving weekend huddled over the computer trying to get these projects out, because sister Kittie and her husband David are coming down from Grover Beach to spend the weekend with us. We'll be splitting the cooking duties, on Thursday. On Friday, we're planning on taking the Gold Line to Chinatown and celebrating Black Friday that way. On Saturday afternoon, we're all going over to Robin and Evan's (our cousin and her husband, who live in the Hollywood Hills) for Evan's famous pizza and because it's an excuse to get together. In between will be frittatas, my famous French toast and, of course, the family tradition: Turkey a la King with the leftovers on Friday evening. And I'm not missing out on all that to make a deadline. Luckily, my contract has a clause that basically says, "If you screw around and don't get stuff to me on time, I can miss my deadlines without breaching the contract, because I'm not responsible for making up time that's lost due to your missing deadlines."

But I never miss deadlines. It may mean that I'm working 14 hours a day for the week after Thanksgiving, but we will get the deadline met. One nice thing: every single chamber member gets a copy of the directory, as well as everyone who writes the chamber from out of town. It's also handed out at Bob Hope Airport (Burbank) by the information desk there, and it's available at most of the larger hotels, so it will be a kind of personal calling card for the next year. And it's been fun putting it together.

Speaking of which, I'd better get back to work. It was time for a break from Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, so I relaxed with a session on Blogger. Here in the 21st Century, that actually makes sense.

Stay Happy.