I've Got Stress Belly

This week has been a work nightmare, albeit a profitable one.

First were several jobs for Client #1. I had to design and coordinate the production of one direct mail piece, and a six-piece event invitation. All last minute. The invites still require one piece to be designed and produced as the client is waiting for confirmation of the Keynote Speaker. For an event on 10/4. Huge name, and definitely worth the wait. (I'll let you know if he does confirm.) If he shows up, attendance should be through the roof and that means big $$$ donated to the California "No on Prop 8" campaign.

Client #1 also has another direct mail piece and two ads that will need to be designed and produced in the next couple of weeks. They require a lot of attention to detail.

Next up was Client #2. They need to have a brochure in production by tomorrow to take to a trade show on Friday. I received the final input on Wednesday so I had to turn that puppy around quick. It has turned out quite nicely and the client is very happy.

Client #3, a new one, had bought space on a billboard but didn't have any creative. When was the billboard supposed to go up? Monday, 9/1, and run for the month of September. When did I hear about the project? Thursday, 8/28. Yikes. But I'm really good at coming up with decent design at the last minute. I presented ideas on Friday but they didn't like the direction I was going and we had a better input session. Sometimes it's easier for clients to tell you what they don't want rather than what they do want. I worked the Labor Day weekend and presented 5 more unique ideas on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I came up with two more ideas after Tuesday's ideas were "getting close."

We finalized the idea on Thursday so it was time for me to buy the photography and prepare the final file for the billboard company and printer. Oh, the size of the billboard, you ask? 14'H x 48'W. HUGE. And the file at 300dpi hi-res? ENORMOUS. At 1/4 size (3.5' x 12') the Photoshop file was at 1GB. It was taking 10 minutes to save the damn thing. I was only increasing the size in increments of 4 feet so I could manage the time and keep saving the file so I didn't lose it.

Okay, so the billboard company agrees to have me send the file at 1/4 size and they'll increase it on their end. They give me the printer's FTP site for upload and it estimates it will take 9 HOURS to complete. I started the upload on Thursday evening at 8 p.m. and kept checking every hour to make sure things were progressing. Unfortunately, their FTP site disconnected in the middle of the night with only half of the file uploaded. I changed strategy and uploaded the file to the billboard company's site which only took two hours. But wait! The billboard company says the headlines need to be larger! So I updated the file and uploaded again! Egad.

This coming week, I have another large project for new Client #3 that is going to require a lot of ingenuity and patience.

Is it any wonder I haven't had a decent night's sleep in a week and have stress belly? Even the Paxil hasn't tamed my anxiety.

The good part is that all the clients were pleasant to deal with and very pleased with the work. The pressure came from the insane deadlines. The billboard company was so impressed with what I pulled off in such a short time that they may refer future work to me if they have clients that need a designer.