Phew!

I LOVE my creative director. The chat with Boston did NOT go well the other day. Our Executive Producer here had a different idea of what was needed than CD and I had. In EP's mind, we've hired a traffic manager and what we need is a second designer. In my mind, I need someone to do grunt level design and production and someone to handle all the details on my end. So, Boston got confused and I got frustrated. After EP left and we hung up the phone, CD did a great job of asking questions and sorting out the mess.

Eventually he put a bunch of sheets of paper on the wall, "OK. Let's break out just the trafficking portion of the job and figure out who is doing what." Trafficking is pulling together all the details, what needs to be included, when is it due, is there printing involved?, call the printer, gather info from people internally, gather content from the client, etc. He listed the three shows I'm working on between now and June. Then across the top he started listing deliverables: onsite signage, ads, web elements, email templates/graphics, registration elements and program guides. Basically, except for the guy hired to do onsite signage and the woman hired to do the big show's program guide, there were blank squares everywhere else.

We looked at it and I sighed, "THAT'S what I do all day. Then at night and on the weekend, I have to do the design work."

He pulled the EP back in, had a meeting with her last night. Today they hired a local woman who's worked on these shows on the marketing side to do 12-15 hours of trafficking a week (or more as needed). She starts tomorrow. In the internal show meeting today, EP made it clear that no one can contact me anymore, it all goes through this new woman. All editorial/text changes in already designed work will be handled by our Boston designer.

Now I just have to be disciplined and use my quiet time to work and not go on the internet!!

Speaking of the internet, there's a crazy "25 Things" burrowing it's way through the Facebook world. I did it yesterday and some of my other friends have also been joining the fray. One of my best friends from college put this one on her list:

Although I am an agnostic Jew, my best friend in college was a born-again Christian. It was one of the most interesting, depthful, multi-layered friendships I've ever had. We're still friends, although haven't talked about god in a while...

TOTALLY made my day. I feel so deep all of a sudden. (And, lest you think it's presumptuous of me to think she meant me, there were only seven or eight Christians in my college at any one time.)