Doug Van Pelt

Driving Blind Full Speed Ahead

"Back to McManus!" I say. It's been awhile, but I finally sorta finished deadline. There is the matter of that one client who hasn't turned in their ad yet and there's that other ad I'm designing for another client ... but other than those two pages, all the rest have been turned into the printer and also proofed. Normally I turn in all my files to the printer and they have each page posted on a special site that I can approve/reject the "soft proofs" in my web browswer... Normally I turn 'em all in by noon on Monday and I'm looking at their proofs on Thursday of that week. This time I had the files posted late on Tuesday night and by Wednesday morning I was seeing the proofs. Very nice. I have to give a special shout out to David Stagg, who helped me get past a "stump" that I was facing with the front cover layout. I was cutting out a guy's hand so that it could be placed on top of the HM logo (kinda like what you see a lot with Sports Illustrated covers, for example). I was using some techniques that I was really just learning after all these years -- making a "clipping path" in PhotoShop and importing that into InDesign, then using some drop shadow and feathering effects to make the transition nice and soft. It all looked great, but when I wrote the file to Postscript and then "ripped" that to PDF, some weird "ghosting" or "artifacts" of layers underneath the arm were showing up on top. Little tiny white outlines of the letters "M" and "A" (from the subtitle "The Hard Music Magazine" under the logo). I got hung up on trying to solve this almost all day on Friday last week. That should've been the day that I finished, but instead I spent close to 8 hours on it to no avail. I had to set it aside to focus on the things that I could accomplish, knowing I'd get back to it later. Anyway, David jumped on it on Tuesday, I think, and helped me deduce that it was indeed not how I was laying it out, but it had to be in the postscripting and ripping stage; because the same thing happened to the cover he did. My printer then helped me out (thanks, Keith) by giving me a file that I loaded into my InDesign program that became a PDF preset, allowing me to export for printing another way. It appears to have worked.

I felt ten pounds lighter when I went home yesterday. Lord willing, these last two ads will be easy and I will wrap everything up today. That should be about as easy as the Dallas Cowboys beating the New York Giants for the third time this season. What?

Again: Back to McManus.
The author describes a road trip in India that was really dangerous, because this vehicle only had one headlight and they made part of their journey at night. This was partly scary, but other cars on that road at night had no headlights.

Yikes! That makes me want to stay prayerful during my upcoming trip to Uganda. I hadn't thought much about it, but simple things like driving safely from one place to another are things that are easy to take for granted. If the driver of our vehicle is safe, that's one thing; but what about the guy in the oncoming lane?

McManus concluded with something like: "...sometimes, you just have to trust the driver."

This is another spiritual truth that reminds me of a conversation I had with an ex-glam metal guitar player from Hollywood. He's got short hair now and is probably a tad rusty on his six-string these days, but he's my pastor and he's a cool guy. Anyway, he was the one who gave me this book by McManus -- Soul Cravings. And we were talking about it a Sunday or two ago. He mentioned that McManus started writing this book to show readers how to relate to culture and tell them the Gospel without using religious language, etc. Once he got started, though, he just decided to do it. Instead of explaining it, he just wrote it. That really makes sense to me now. Being 95% of the way through the book, it makes sense that the author has explained biblical truths with stories and non-religious explanations that key in on the principles of how God created us uniquely and with longings that are resolved in Him and by relating to Him.

I think he's done a good job.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at January 24, 2008 08:48 AM