I've mentioned times past that each year at this time my employer seconds me out to an industry organization to design and typeset the event program for an annual hoo-hoo. For various reasons, including a number of distractions at the workplace (people with small projects who want to go to the head of the line) and the faltering efficiency that comes of jaded, weary late middle-age, I was last week beginning to feel distinctly uneasy about this year's product, which is due at the commercial printer no later than the coming Friday morning. I had the various components and subassemblies strewn out on the floor, so to say, but they weren't coming together.

Part of what I dreaded was the guild's insistence on including the fawning, insincere letters from public officials at various levels of government (the sector of which BDS is a proud member shares a long tradition of "Does your back itch? Funny, so does mine" with elected officialdom), there being a record eleven of these this year. Times past I have reproduced these with absolutely fanatical fidelity to the original documents: I scan them at 1200 dpi. I hunt down the original typefaces. I kern and track to the tenth-millimeter. Shit, if CBS had actually been in the document-forging business, I could have seen to it that Dan Rather would have his anchor gig to this day.

And this year, an epiphany: no one reads these things. No one, absolutely no one, will notice if the text of a congresscritter's subcommittee assignment on his letterhead takes up 3.6 centimeters of 7-point Helvetica caps rather than 3.3. None, nicht, nada. I was briefly tempted to tamper with the actual text of the congratulatory messages ("Let me pause briefly from feasting on the entrails of late-term aborted fetuses to congratulate the Association of Wax Fruit Exporters on its forty-third annual banquet…"), but although 99% of the attendees would never have noticed, someone would have, and even the current management at BDS, which regards me rather by way of a charming old eccentric who lends the place some color, would fire my sorry ass in a heartbeat—particularly since the local Big Boss is 2010 chairman of the Association of Wax Fruit Exporters, and is keen to have an unblemished event.

This being realized, the pieces magically came together, although the magic required me to work at home most of the weekend. The product is (with the past few hours toil this evening) about 7% short of completion. I think I can now respond to the printer's anxious emails with some confidence.

I do take some satisfaction in producing a product that is beyond the skillsets of anyone else in BDS outside the mothership back on the Right Coast (I've seen some impressive national product, but I suspect that they outsource some of this). I'm keenly aware of my limitations as a designer, and I know that I'm driving the Adobe Creative Suite, by the assorted components of which I've made my living since "Iran-Contra" was fresh news, in the slow lane, but I'm employed by an outfit that apparently has no one else on the payroll this side of the continental divide who can

—operate a scanner
—duplicate a CD-ROM
—convert a word processing document to PDF
—resize a photograph without utterly deranging its aspect ratio

All this is in some wise gratifying. I have landed among savages, and while I'm nothing like savvy enough to rule them, I'm comfortable with the shaman gig.

cordially,

[edits: math transposition; fugitive decimal points]