I recently went on a rant about the Chamber of Commerce logo. How it's always a lo-res jpg. Well, ironies of ironies, they called us a few weeks ago, asking if we happened to have an .eps of the logo. Lucky them, their logo is super simple. Also, lucky them, I have the font they use, so I recreated their logo in Illustrator. Perhaps a little unethical.

Oscar's third seems to have gone really well. Thank goodness.

I'm not as stupid as Judy must think I am

We have a client with ridiculous two-sided, full-color, full-bleed business cards. They've ordered them for various employees maybe five times in the year I've been here. And I have fucked them up every time. The first time, it was a minor foible. Typo or something. The second time, was probably a typo too, but being the second mess up, it's no longer a foible. The third time, they'd moved, so I had to change their address and I left the old zip code. I'm such a flake. A long time went between the third and fourth. I forgot they'd moved, so I sent the proof with the old address. I'm an idiot. Now, I picked the one oddly formatted card to create proofs for new employees, so the alignment and spacing is all wrong. I can only imagine what the card orderer thinks of me. Has she even noticed that I've fucked up their cards every time she's ordered them? I want to email her some long excuse begging her not to think I'm stupid. But that would probably just annoy her.

Letter to a client

Dear Xxxxx,
You know how your text is always pixilated? It's because your idiot "graphic designer" uses Photoshop to do all his design work.
Please drop him. Find someone who uses illustrator.

Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator. Please use Illustrator.

Be forewarned, this post will be boring,

but it excites me.

In InDesign, to make files a usable size, images aren't actually embedded in the file. They are linked. The picture shows up because it's being read from its file location, but if you were to send the InDesign file to somebody else without sending along the files for all the linked pictures, they would show up very pixilated and of unprintable quality.* If you change the name or location of the file, InDesign won't be able to properly display or print your graphic either.

That's just background though for me to rave about one of our clients. They're another printer, and they job out to us on occasion for small digital runs. Most of it is for one company that prints a lot of brochures. They're all the same, just with different regions named on the cover. We receive the files as .pdf, so in order to make it cost effective, I place them into InDesign so we can print them two-up on a sheet. This requires a few minutes of adjusting the placement of the images. But, this is the awesome part: whenever I get a new file, all I have to do is re-link the images to the new files and all the work is done for me. Then command-SHIFT-S and I'm golden. Get it? Don't you love it? I do.

*These statements are in no way based on research. They are based on experience and the way my mind processes things.

"We have used Papyrus font on some of our other
signs, maybe we could try that one."

Just so you know, you can't really put a horizontal business card inside a standard tri-fold 8.5 x 11 brochure. The first two panels are 3 11/16" and the third panel is 3 5/8". A standard business card is 3.5" wide. Of course, you could put a vertical business in it.