Ask any desktop publisher what the best part of the job is, and chances
are they'll say it's the act of creating. A lot of satisfaction comes from
putting pieces together to make a whole, like a brochure that someone actually
reads and uses.
"[There's] nothing quite like making things," says Ward Stirrat. He is
a desktop publisher and designer. "It's the kind of satisfaction carpenters
get, but without the grunting and sweating and broken thumbnails that come
with swinging a hammer.
"Every job is weird, exciting and frightening, all at once."
Stirrat recounts one particularly challenging job. "A large real estate
developer was developing a $30-million building. They came to us and said,
'We have 10 days before opening; we need a brochure.' It's a six- to eight-week
job, but it has to be done in 10 days!"
That meant the brochure had to be designed, paper stock had to be ordered,
a typeface had to be chosen and photos had to be scanned.
"It's November and a lot of the shots necessary for marketing shouldn't
be shot in November, so already there's a photo logistical problem. The view
is a major marketing benefit of the building. It has a stupendous 360-degree
view on the top of a hill.
"But it's November and it's mucky and the sky is dirty and hazy and it's
raining all the time, and the city really looks terrible. So here we are needing
to get a panorama shot and we get up at some ungodly hour and stand on the
top of the building waiting for sunrise to occur."
Stirrat tried to get a shot that emulated a nice summer morning with sunshine
blushing over the rooftop. However, the equipment froze in the gale force
winds. He and his assistant had to keep the equipment warm with butane torches
until the sun came up.
The tale didn't end there. The team decided the brochure needed "trinkets"
-- little drop-in shots of the types of items one would find in an upscale
condo. But where would Stirrat, who was doubling as the photographer, find
what he needed to set everything up and shoot in such a short time?
He ended up taking objects from his own residence to a photo studio. When
his wife came home, she thought they had been robbed.
"I had to take the bed sheets, wrap everything up -- all of our good china
and pillows off the bed and our vases and candelabras and everything else
-- and haul it to the studio to take photos of it that afternoon."
Then there was the writing. "We wrote the whole thing in an afternoon,"
he says.
What else? "We had to get a custom towel hand-embroidered with the logo....We
were at the printers doing press checks at 2 and 3 in the morning...calling
in a lot of favors."
In the end, Stirrat and his team made their deadline. They got paid. And
they even won an award for the brochure.
But it's those unyielding deadlines that Stirrat likes least about the
business. Some people are not suited for that kind of pace, and there can
be a fair amount of burnout.
"Clients are unrelenting in their expectations and their ability to drive
you insane with unreasonable and impossible requests that they fully expect
you to fulfil, and uh [sometimes] not get paid for."
After 20 years of working for newspapers and magazines, PJ Perdue has started
working for herself. She has a home-based desktop publishing business. With
the new company, she has made the switch from print to Internet and likes
both media.
"I love desktop publishing," she says. "I don't know which I prefer, paper
or online. I have so many good memories and associations with the printed
medium. When you are working in print, you have a tangible product that you
can send to your mother or store in the closet."
When you design a website or do an online newsletter, Perdue says it's
very intangible unless you go to the trouble of printing it out. "It's a product
that people see and use without ever touching."
If you're thinking about getting into desktop publishing, Perdue says you
will need a good eye for layout. You have to love the printed word and love
looking at newspapers and magazines. And you have to be a good speller. If
she had a slogan for her company, it would be: "E-Creatrix Internet Studio
-- where everything is spelled right."
She claims she was born a perfect speller. "It's been a curse," Perdue
says. Misspelled words jump out and assault her vision at every glance. She
can't pick up a magazine, newspaper, flyer or envelope without a typo smacking
her in the eye.
But what might seem a curse to Perdue is undoubtedly a blessing to her
clients. According to Perdue, nothing makes a bad impression like error-infested
text. People may not notice when it's done right, but they sure notice when
it's wrong.
Michael Payne runs his own desktop publishing business in Florida. "It's
a very stimulating business. Interesting because it's always changing. You're
always facing new products," he says.
He says you must have a broad range of skills and interests if you're going
to work for yourself and do complete projects. "You better know something
about photography, writing, and have a little bit of artistic ability."
According to Payne, you don't have to be an illustrator. "If I need an
illustration, I can find something similar, scan it, suck it into a program,...erase
the parts I don't want and then make a skeletal version of it in postscript.
Then I'll suck that into [another program] and manipulate the lines and add
whatever else I need. I wind up with an original illustration -- and I never
had to draw anything."
The downside, says Payne, is working on your own. "Sometimes you just want
to tell somebody a joke and hear them laugh."