First of all, I’ll thank you all for being very patient with my dream project – Norse Mythology art book. From the first idea of a single book, it evolved into a huge beast of a project! Of course, nobody is happier than me, but at the same time, it became enormous work in the terms of design, layout, neverending tiny reworks, adjustments and all other things and extra obligations I wasn’t aware of when Jon and I were making plans for the campaign.
So it’s best if I put this into scale… Bear with me.
My dream project was Norse Mythology art book. A single nice book about vikings and their gods, beliefs, and monsters. So that was in terms of design – on single indd file ready for printing. Simple, right? Ok, and then we put it on the crowdfunding – KickstarTHOR campaign, which was a blast! A lot of stretch goals were offered, and each one was unlocked. That was 10 stretch goals in total.
So this all emerges from a single (1) indd file to a gargantuan beast of 49 unique files, each one with its own design, layout, measures, bleeds, dielines etc. I’m talking about prints, bookplate, calendar, clamshell case, bookmarks, sketchbook, dust jacket for each version of the book with different measures, foil files, emboss files, deboss files… and the list goes on…
I was entering the realm of design and layout. Being a designer it wasn’t an easy task for me. I wanted to have the utmost and complete control of every piece of every item we created, so I’ve done all by myself. Of course with help of Jon who helped me with all dielines, measures, and who made tables in the calendar, and the help of Ivan Radman, experienced designer, who helped me whenever I was stuck in some part of the process, and who is helping me right now with the portfolio case file.
Last time I wrote an update saying triumphantly: “Everything is sent to production!” And it was. But it was returned for reworks a lot of times. I mean a lot!
Another very time-consuming moment that also made its cause is: we are in 3 (!) different parts of the world, and in 3 different time zones: Jon is in the US, I’m in the mid Europe, and our printer is in China! That means communication is sometimes very slow. I send my querie/problem to Jon in the morning my local time. Jon replied me in the morning by his local US time, and say I’ll ask printer. Of course, at that time, it’s already evening in China, so we wait the next day for the printer’s reply – again with the same timezone delay. And for getting a single reply and instruction it took – 2 days! Here I’m not talking about weekends, which are another delay factor. I think you get the picture behind the scenes…
So right now, we are delayed, but as every other great project – it must be some delays at some point. That will ensure and provide the best product we can make. Of course, I could just say: -“… you know what, it’s ok, we just going to leave it this way. Nobody will know… and we’ll be on time… .” – but deep in my heart I knew that would be wrong. Once the book is published, there’s no going back. And I would feel bad after 10 or 20 years from now, knowing that if I just put some extra effort and time to improve it everybody would be completely satisfied. So I’m doing it right now – I rework all bugs, mistakes and make all tiny improvements! And here we are, after the mid Sep, we are still waiting for the birth of a book.
In the meantime, I’ve started to work on the pledged b/w commissions from the KickstarTHOR campaign. So far the 6 pieces are done, and there will be a lot more of them. I’ll post the images in the next post
Thank you all, best regards, Milivoj and Jon