Sir Grump Munch

June 25, 2004

Oh, Wisconsin

Well, the good news is that the catalog is finished and printed, we just got our first trimmed and bound copies in today. I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, though I learned a tremendous amount during the course of this project and the printing process.

Rented a car and drove up to Sun Prairie, WI last friday to look at 92 pages of proofs. Unfortunately some of the colors looked wack in the proof, in addition to a number of typographical errors and a few files that needed color-correction. I did the best I could, staying up until 3am and getting up at 8am to go back in and fix some of the files myself. Unfortunately, changes are quite expensive since each page had to be "re-ripped," at a cost of $40-50 each with the new proof they required. So I had to cut my losses and let some things slide.

Well, I learned that the proof isn't exactly God's Word, because when it was actually on press, a lot of the colors that looked shit in the proof looked fine in the print. The nasty surprise was how light my typeface printed (looked more substantial in my inkjet prints, obviously, but also heavier in the proof), so we bumped up the black a bit overall to make it stronger. This made some of the images a little dark overall, which is unfortunate. There are also some errors that nobody caught before it was too late; typos and a couple slightly more embarassing slips, but when the mantra is "get the goddamn thing done" and everyone is breathing down my neck (with no real proofreader), there are bound to be mistakes. Live and learn, it happens. I look at it and see what could've been better, but I think it's a good piece that our customers will like and our salespeople will use as a great tool for the next year or two. Glad to be done with it and move on to some new stuff...

Anyway, while I was up there getting it printed (near Madison), I had the better part of two days over the weekend as "free time," a rare concept for me lately. Naturally I skipped boring Madison and used the time to my advantage, taking a solo trip to the Wisconsin Dells, a place that I'd always known about but never properly experienced. I won't go into much detail, except to say that I did about as much as you can do in the amount of time that I had, I took a shitload of great photos, and had a fucking blast, even without my sweetheart by my side. No worry, she and I wlll go again. What a treat I had for two days, living it up like a foolish tourist and loving every minute. The Wisconsin Dells: My Kind of Tourist Trap.

Photos of my Wisconsin trip (printing press stuff excepted), featuring the Dells, Baraboo, Portage, Sauk City and more, can be seen here.

Posted by pj at June 25, 2004 11:46 PM