In my freelance work, this is one of the busiest times of the year. There’s a magazine that romance readers and romance writers like to read, called Romantic Times BOOKclub, and every year they have a convention. For authors and fans who like the idea of meeting up with each other at booksignings, this is a pretty big deal. So romance publishers like to do things for the “RT convention” like advertise extra big in the magazine or prepare print books for authors going to the event.

This translates to a lot of ad and print book production on my end.

I learned long ago that in my work I’m figuratively always the last one out the door in a burning building and that I really have to depend on the speed of those who run before me from the fire. If they all back time, plan, work according to plan, and meet their deadlines, I’m safe. If they all wait until the last possible minute to do their work and fail to meet their deadlines and allow me enough time to do my stage of the work, I’m screwed.

This is the nature of the work of a graphic designer. It’s how it’s always been. It’s how it always will be.

In the old days, when everything was analog, the deadline times were further apart, allowing more time between pre-production and production. This is because everything took longer to do. If the account executive wanted to change the font on something, the graphic artist would look at him with a murderous rage because it would involve a whole hell of a lot more than highlighting some text and selecting another font from the menu. It involved measuring the space, picking a font, selecting a new sheet of rub-on letters, and manually rubbing them on, one by freaking one. They didn’t have a digital PDF workflow. They had to do color separations for every page, big honking sheets of plastic that were transparent and black, one for Cyan, one for Magenta, one for Yellow, one for Black. If you wanted to change a little something—add a period to the red title, for instance—you had to change every sheet because a particular shade of red dot on the page would mean a little bit of cyan, a little bit of magenta, a little bit of yellow, and a little bit of black. What a pain.

So in those days, they made sure there was plenty of time for production. Plenty.

These days, they figure you can make changes on the fly and last minute, so production times are heavily reduced. Yesterday, I completed eight print covers right after getting all the raw materials I needed that same evening. Eight. And I’m about to complete three or four more this morning before I get dressed and go to the movies.

I am superwoman. Hear me roar as I run out of the burning building with my hair on fire. Romantic image, isn’t it? I’m not sweating it, though. It’s all in the name of love.

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