Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2019/08/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I also enjoyed the LUG yearbooks and have missed them. Gene Sent from my iPad > On Aug 25, 2019, at 3:20 PM, Brian Reid <reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> > wrote: > > There has been sadness that the LUG yearbook has taken a hiatus. > > I think the problem is that very few people understand how much work and > how much expertise is required to assemble a book like that and meet Leica > image-quality standards. It sounds conceptually easy, but it is very hard > to do a good job, and the standards of the existing yearbooks were set > very high. Jim made it look easy. It wasn't. > > Jim Shulman had many years of experience doing yearbook-like things > professionally. He was very good at it, and he knew exactly what he was up > against when he first suggested the yearbook. High-end publication has not > been at the center my career, but I've done maybe 20 or 25 yearbook-like > publications (annual reports, IPO prospectus, catalogs, etc) in the past > few decades. Usually as part of my job, but a couple of years ago I > published a 50th-Anniversary yearbook for my high school graduating class. > Since the entire audience for that book was people whose opinion mattered > to me, I reviewed my InDesign documentation, bought a new SpyderX, and > poured my heart into it. I took 2 weeks of vacation time to finish it, and > all in all I spent maybe 150 hours on that task. I had it printed by Lulu. > It was excellent. But it was an insane amount of work. Probably no one > else noticed that I color-matched the cover of the 50th-anniversary > yearbook to the 1966 original. But I had to. Those Heidelberg Versafire > digital presses will do whatever you tell them, but you have to tell them. > > I have no criticism of people who don't have the mixture of skill, > experience, hardware, and spare time to finish a LUG yearbook. Things > happen. And many people won't understand how much work it is until they > get started. > > There is a chance that after I retire and sell my house and move somewhere > smaller and cheaper and get enough sleep every night for 2 weeks straight, > that I might have enough time and energy to take the wheel of a reborn LUG > yearbook. No promises, but I enjoyed the yearbook too. > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information