Importance of Archival Research
Boxes, Drawers, and Hard Drives—The Importance of the Archival Search. Searching for the right images for your book is a tedious process, but we are almost always successful. The reason is we [...]
Focusing on What’s Important
Focus Groups: How They Help You For over twenty years, I’ve been conducting focus groups with new clients. These focus groups are typically held at the beginning of the research phase and the [...]
Too Much Information?
You Can Never Provide a Client Too Much Information Several times over the last year, we’ve had to modify the project schedule for a client in New Jersey, one of the largest retirement entities [...]
Just Leave the Pros Alone
One of our favorite book designers lives in Minneapolis, where it begins snowing around Halloween and doesn’t thaw out till Mother’s Day—or so it seems. Rick is talented, a fitness animal, good [...]
The Curse and Joy of Digital Photography
The advantages of digital photography far outweigh the old print or slide (transparency) format. But it also means they can be created by anyone with a camera or cell phone, and that often means [...]
The Project Budget
When we present a budget to you, the client, it’s usually broken into a pie chart of a small handful of categories (writing, design, printing, etc.). But on our end, there are as many as eighty [...]
Press Check
In printing, there is what is called a “press check,” which is going to the printer to oversee the actual printing of a job. For many print jobs—newsletters, brochures, etc.—you’re there for [...]
The Value of an Index.
(For more on indexing, please read the posting from Shoshana Hurwitz, an indexer who we’ve often used.) Most clients forget about their book containing an index until we remind them of it. And [...]