When I was asked if I would be able to do a book for the International Seminar on Buddhist Heritage, Gujarat hosted by the Government of Gujarat and The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, I really didn't have a good reason to say no. Even when they told me that I had just less than a fortnight to come up with the book, I thought it was pretty 'doable', especially because the coordinators thought the pages wouldn't exceed 40 at any cost. No 40 pages in 12 days is no big deal for a sub-editor.
Had I all the matter and a couple of designers to assist me, it would be done in a couple of days. But this was the university and the government I was dealing with. The matter on the university from the university took a week to come. I had just done three pages in that week's time when I got a mail on the morning of December 28 that the pages had increased to 75. Somehow, they didn't think it would require more hands and greater amount of hours. I had 72 pages to edit, design and compile by Jan 4.
The point is when you work in a newspaper office, you get used to the 'invisible assistants'. They come in the form of designers, people who extract and process images (jpg to tif), copy editors and a whole range of technicians. I wanted to use Quark because it's a great help for text-heavy magazine-style pages. What I did not know is that I would have to go through a whole range of processes to make pictures 'printable'. Processing images takes time. Unfortunately neither the government nor the university had much of a clue there. With help from a few friends, I got a few collages done only to get a mail from the university to 'replace just a couple of pics with others'. Damn! Replacing pics in a collage would mean doing the whole collage again.
Swearing and cribbing, I managed to get 69 pages done (sitting up in front of my 17-inch monitor from 9 am to 3 am everyday), hoping to leave some time for the cover design. The night before submission to the printer, I got a request to add two more pages. Damn again!
Luckily, we managed to put things together in the wake of 'incongruent circumstances' as the souvenir coordinator put it. This wouldn't have been possible without help from Karan, Deepanshu, Elton, Riddhi and Amisha, who put things together from different parts of the world. The souvenir coordinator was pleased and claimed he'd learned a lot about designing through this entire process (a good start!).
As for the book, it was released by Dalai Lama and Narendra Modi at the inauguration ceremony of the seminar. No, my name wasn't called out and I didn't rush to the stage. I was happy to watch Dalai Lama leaf through the pages of the book on stage, while I leafed through my own copy. This was my first attempt at editing and designing anything that resembles a magazine. Yes, there are loads of textual and design errors (the former because of the lack of time and the latter because of my ignorance) but am quite proud of the fact that I took this up as a challenge and went through with it. Go on, read it!
History of Buddhism in Gujarat
Had I all the matter and a couple of designers to assist me, it would be done in a couple of days. But this was the university and the government I was dealing with. The matter on the university from the university took a week to come. I had just done three pages in that week's time when I got a mail on the morning of December 28 that the pages had increased to 75. Somehow, they didn't think it would require more hands and greater amount of hours. I had 72 pages to edit, design and compile by Jan 4.
The point is when you work in a newspaper office, you get used to the 'invisible assistants'. They come in the form of designers, people who extract and process images (jpg to tif), copy editors and a whole range of technicians. I wanted to use Quark because it's a great help for text-heavy magazine-style pages. What I did not know is that I would have to go through a whole range of processes to make pictures 'printable'. Processing images takes time. Unfortunately neither the government nor the university had much of a clue there. With help from a few friends, I got a few collages done only to get a mail from the university to 'replace just a couple of pics with others'. Damn! Replacing pics in a collage would mean doing the whole collage again.
Swearing and cribbing, I managed to get 69 pages done (sitting up in front of my 17-inch monitor from 9 am to 3 am everyday), hoping to leave some time for the cover design. The night before submission to the printer, I got a request to add two more pages. Damn again!
Luckily, we managed to put things together in the wake of 'incongruent circumstances' as the souvenir coordinator put it. This wouldn't have been possible without help from Karan, Deepanshu, Elton, Riddhi and Amisha, who put things together from different parts of the world. The souvenir coordinator was pleased and claimed he'd learned a lot about designing through this entire process (a good start!).
As for the book, it was released by Dalai Lama and Narendra Modi at the inauguration ceremony of the seminar. No, my name wasn't called out and I didn't rush to the stage. I was happy to watch Dalai Lama leaf through the pages of the book on stage, while I leafed through my own copy. This was my first attempt at editing and designing anything that resembles a magazine. Yes, there are loads of textual and design errors (the former because of the lack of time and the latter because of my ignorance) but am quite proud of the fact that I took this up as a challenge and went through with it. Go on, read it!
History of Buddhism in Gujarat
No comments:
Post a Comment