User:Ssstephen/prototype/20231003

performance upgrade

Prototype implies maybe that something will go wrong, something is going wrong, this shit could be better? Is this optimism or despair?

An old client got in touch last week who I worked with three years ago and previously on an annual project. Last year I was trying to make time for xpub so I turned the work down. This year I need money and am less afraid.

We spoke last week on Microsoft Teams to catch up, he's a kind guy, was telling me about his family and hobbies, nice to be in touch with him again. He also told me about struggles they had with the replacement they got for me last year, and showed me how the project went while I was off it. It seemed fine. The project involves the publication of data on salary levels in Ireland, from the point of view of a recruitment agency. He is keen to take it in a more socially conscious direction this year which is exciting but ultimately the publication is a promotional piece for this private company so potentially problematic. The company has a DEI officer (diversity, equity and inclusion) so he suggested they become involved also.

Today I will prepare some sample pages for how the new report could look. My plan is to use the InDesign document from 2021 as a starting point, as it will make it easier for me to adhere to the brand guidelines and a lot of the work is already done in terms of typography, grids, colours, that can be reused. How long will this transition take from Adobe to other tools? Do I plan to reach an end point? Maybe, I at least would still like to phase out old practices more than I currently have. However the existing workflows and processes are efficient which in this situation is super useful. I don't want to spend more time on this than necessary.

I open the document and save it in a newly created folder for the 2024 version of the publication. I also open a .txt file I made during our video call with some notes on the new version. The notes mostly detail how the company would like to have a social impact, be honest, authentic and trustworthy, and celebrate positive changes that have happened in the workforce recently. Are these appropriate aims for a company? Yes I think so, although they have to be woven into the profit motive to be allowed, it is still a positive that a company has these goals and I hope they can have a helpful impact by pursuing them. I am also driven by $$$ in this situation (it's my job) and I also hope that we can have a positive rather than negative effect on the world while doing it. Note for future prototypes, how to improve this balance, how to increase awareness of whether the effect is in fact helpful.

I'll start by deleting most the pages in the document, because I only need a few sample spreads for today. There is a separation between the content and the form, which is helpful, because the content doesnt exist yet. Neither does the form I suppose. Based on our conversations at the moment, I will develop some visual approaches to the document, and the client will create the text content and decide what data to gather. The process is less linear than it appears. Ok the annotation is really distracting from the work I wonder if I need to change the balance a little.

I go to the clients website and socials to see it their brand has changed in the past years (usually more reliable than a formal brand guidelines document). Its pretty much the same. They have been active with their social impact campaign which is reassuring. I notice they have some mentions in particular about equality, which I will use in the visual approach. I'll make the text and figures bolder and bigger. Impactful? Yes I guess so, its part of the language.

I mess around with typesizes and colours for a while. I make a big fuck-off equals sign for the front cover. It doesnt have to be super involved. What does it mean to furnish a business with these symbols? What am I allowing or creating? They have some photography of awareness campaigns and environmental restoration actions they perform, I'll include them in the sample pages.

Then I talk to xpub2 and michael about our work for a while. Then I do therapy for a while. Then Simon is here and then I go for a walk. This all takes about four hours and now I'm back at my laptop no wait this is not entirely true. I used the laptop to take notes while talking to michael, and I used it to video call therapy. But my focus is back to note taking and I guess the work from earlier. I have to talk to them tomorrow morning so would be good to finish it this evening. Ideally in the next hour or so (its 18:17) so I can send it to them (like before 18:00 gmt so they can see it in work hours). It's not really very considerate to send someone a work email at 18:00 I think, but its kind of accepted practice. I think I would prefer not to engage in it.

The InDesign 2023 thing is getting annoying, this time I had to specifically find the 2022 InDesign.exe file I wanted to open the .indd with, because it was auto opening with 2023. Maybe I'll uninstall the new version. Fuck it still opened in the new version, maybe I'll just use it its getting too complicated not to.

I download a free svg of the world map from https://simplemaps.com/resources/svg-world . Is it ethical or legal to use this in a commercial project. It's a Robinson projection. I don't have time to worry about the political implications of using a specific projection. My computer wants to open it automatically in Inkscape, but I need to do it in Illustrator so I can copy paste to InDesign. The transition is harder than the source or the destination.

I go back to their socials to find placeholder images. I'm getting a little bored I'll send it to him soon. Ok found a couple of new images. Meh it looks ok, I'll send it to him and we can talk in the morning. I export a pdf and now I'll draft a quick email. It's also a question of how happy I want to be at this stage of a project like this. Its too much expectation for it to be great. It's also too early to invest so much time into it, and energy of other sorts. Is it ever appropriate to invest the amount of emotional energy into work like this that one would be "proud" of it? How proud do I want to be? Why?

Oopsi I got distracted by my volition and exported spreads instead of pages. Exporting again, I'll save on top of the same file. I care so much less about PDF exports when they are not going to print, it's part of my training. If this was a PDF for print it would be such a different experience, maybe I'll write about it here at some stage.

Hi folks, 

A few sample pages here so we have something to look at as we talk tomorrow.

Trying to keep it similar to what we have had in the past but with a very different approach to photography, as well as some strong typographic pages where we can (maybe) make some big statements. Also all using sample text for the moment but if you wish we could tweak this for showing to management on Thursday, to give them an idea of where were planning to go. For example even a contents page could be interesting.

All up for discussion of course, looking forward to chatting about it tomorrow!
Stephen

The words I use in this context have different meanings to other contexts. "interesting", "an idea","a very different approach", "strong", "looking forward to". It's not lying but it's certainly a specific interpretation of the words. I sent the email at 18:54 (17:54 gmt).

It's got a picture of a bombax tree on the front, I like it.