Unanticipated Glitches On Candid Camera
Sunday, July 6th, 2008I had a “Duh!” moment the other day when I received the first draft of the book’s back cover design. It was my own fault for assuming that everyone at the South American design company which I had hired over the internet; would just naturally speak English, simply because the project manager who communicates with me does. Over the course of the weeks that we have worked together, I have sent several versions of the written material which I wanted them to use on the back cover.
It was basically the same few short paragraphs, but I had tightened it up over time and I wanted to be sure that this latest version was the one that they used. So, in my wordy way, I wrote two paragraphs to instruct them to delete all past versions and only use this one. Plus, I discussed the two photo possibilities which I was sending for the author’s picture which I wanted on the back of the book. To make sure they could tell which version this was, I placed that day’s date, in large numbers, at the top of the message. Then, separated by a number of spaces…..I gave them the updated material that I wanted to be worked into a pleasing design on the back cover of my book.
Woops! Not a good idea. When I first eyeballed the samples sent the next day, I was struck by how absolutely jammed in all of the copy seemed to be. It was a square block, chock full of words that covered the entire area. Then, I looked more closely and realized that my long instructions had been featured in the most important section of the cover and my date “July 1, 2008” was right there in the big numerals, as if it had some relation to a book which wouldn’t even be printed until August.
My one beautiful and genuinely heartfelt quotation from a big name recommending me and my book was put into a single font, no italics, and stacked into a square shape…… looking quite like the ingredients list on the side of a salad dressing jar.
Clearly, this was a case of a Spanish-speaking artistic designer trying very hard to cram in all of this unreasonably long business, that some *#*!!* airhead in America wanted on the back of her obviously egotistical book.
Viewed in that light, they didn’t do half bad. They managed to get it all in. How long did that take?
Except that I saw no need to announce to every book buyer a few inside design-related instructions that had simply passed back and forth during the summer of this year. It was like engraving the words of an instructional post-it note onto an award plaque and then expecting it to be meaningful years later on the shelf of some hero.
Tip: It’s wonderful that we can now solicit universal bids and work way outside of our own country’s borders; but we can’t just relax about it and make the assumption that our language is easy for them to deal with. Particularly, if you communicate with someone who is not doing the actual work, but who might simply be the portal for all of their English language business. This is less vital in matters that don’t involve very many words, such as pure graphics, but I would think twice….and more…..before hiring someone in such a situation to do your copyediting. In my case, 100-200 words were pushing the envelope farther than it was set up for.
Anyway, this is all very correctable and my memos are already sent out to them concerning it. I don’t mean to make fun of them, and I do see how it happened. But, I set out here on this blog to give the whole unvarnished* truth about such a venture as I have embarked upon. So, the seller must beware in my case, because this is Candid Camera.
*Well, almost unvarnished. I did change history a bit on an earlier blog’s fuss, feeling that I’d been a little harsh. Mama relented, but Mama’s going to tell it like it is from now on!
lindajbrown