3/18/08-4/2/08

I’ve contacted Tammy Lechner again, since Rhonda Prast never responded to me. She’s willing to do the interview via email since she doesn’t have skype. I’ve emailed her questions. I've tried contacting Jeff Jasper via email but it got bounced back. I've found Dick Van Halsema through Linkedin, a career network (the job equivalent to facebook or myspace). I've emailed him through that and awaiting a response. I’ll take what I can get at this point. I’ve got Jim Curley and Patricia McDaniel in person, John Hansen via phone, and Tammy Lechner via email. I haven't been able to get in touch with Marcia Prouse yet (time difference makes it hard) but I’m hoping to catch her soon and just chat with her – not go over her pictures individually, since she has so many, but rather get a general sense from her what she thinks. Originally, my committee told me I didn’t need to contact her, but Abby doesn’t have her on the list of people to contact either, and it doesn’t seem right (more to Marcia than anyone) to not have one of us at least call her.

There's been a slight, unexpected copyediting bottleneck. I designed several versions of the one story for me that is ready – Gladys Thomas. Also did the portrait ones that are done. We are over a month behind schedule. Time for copyediting is definitely something to factor in for the next bookmakers.

We had another title discussion (sorta). Now two options are being considered. The second is - Arrow Rock: Where the Past is the Future
I don’t love it, but I like it better than the former, so I’m hoping it wins out. I gave my favorite title one last go and sent an email supporting one that Shaney offered: Arrow Rock: Where History came to Visit and Stay. Or perhaps a version of that: Arrow Rock: Where History comes Home. You still get the history aspect, but it’s a bit warmer. I made a passionate (and diplomatic!) but didn’t get much response from rita. That’s ok, I’ll be happy if we go with the Past/Future one. It sounds like the Beyond History: Arrow Rock’s thriving Village will be the back cover. I do like the play of the ‘History’ being the focus on the front and the ‘Beyond History’ being on the back. Good interaction. (note: the beyond history idea was eventually discarded because we couldn’t find a picture that worked well).

Being in London away from the group is hard. I have to struggle through my problems via email. I don’t recommend it if at all possible in a group setting – hard to feel as part of the project from 4500 miles away. Alas, life can only wait so long I suppose. But I do miss everyone at Missouri!

Abby came to visit for a week. We had one day of fun and then several days of serious Arrow Rock design work. We ironed out some technical details (such as: is the caption to picture distance from ascender to descender or from main letter body to picture; how far is the byline from the title, all that kind of fun stuff) . I showed Abby how to make an object style for the photo-border (very helpful, in case we ever decide to change it). We’ve de-spaced the captions a little, since they seemed a bit airy (leading, ledding? I can’t remember the official terminology – the spacing between lines, not letters). Mostly, we tried to establish some consistent design strategies. This is difficult, because every story seems to be different. We ended up designing about fourteen spreads each, (around 7 stories) and hope that at least some of these pass by Rita and Joy when they review them. I have found that design in this capacity is not so much creative as it is problem solving - trying to fit puzzle pieces together (even if they don’t always fit). Cropping pictures, which Angus McDougall says is a no-no, has become inevitable, just as chopping captions and once in a while text has as well. The biggest struggle for us has became the dreaded gutter. When a picture has to break a certain way across the gutter so as not to have important details lost in the crack, it really limits the design. This is much more an issue in a book than a newspaper or even a magazine, where the gutter absorbs very little (if any) of the picture. The sequencing is also important, and when it’s the middle picture we’ve chosen to be big, that’s a real doozy to design, because one can’t stack the smaller two. Abby was working on her Kathy story and said something to the effect of – this one is a problem child, because of this factor and that factor - once I get past this story it will be easier. But as we both agreed later, every spread has its own idiosyncrasies, and every one is a problem child! I will say that when we didn’t have text to work with, at least placing the pictures on the page in general sequence and size order helped later when we added text (though by no means meant we didn’t have to eventually redesign). Still, having the pictures already there, ready and waiting, was very helpful, so if future book makers ever have to wait for text, I recommend doing this.