Brochure: A Bruce story

One more Bruce story. The meeting in question was actually several weeks ago now.

Soon we'll be having a meeting to determine a specific format for our brochure. We call it a brochure, but it's really a 16 page booklet that grew out of what was once a flier.

The brochure needed some updating before a conference Bruce was going to. Bruce is friendly and talkative so we send him off to conferences a lot. He'd spent weeks making what were really rather minor changes. Two days before he has to leave he hands me his "final" version. I make recommendations. Redo the cover, make this line thinner so it matches the others, adjust the spacing, what is this right here?, you change fonts on every page, colors too, why do you put this in every brochure when you know we're always gonna tell you to take it out, etc., etc.

He took it and made the changes. Well done. Bravo.

The next morning, 8 hours before FedEx is to pick everything up, 48 until he had to catch his flight, he e-mails the PDF to all the managers and editors so they can judge it and make changes. Then he hits Print.

He gets e-mails back from one editor with a list of changes. He ignores the list, makes completely different changes, sends out another PDF, and hits Print again. The first batch of brochures gets put in a case for FedEx.

Two more responses come in about the first PDF. He makes half of those changes, sends another PDF, and hits Print. The second batch of brochures gets put in the case for FedEx right on top of the first batch. There's about 25-30 in a batch.

Three more e-mails come in about the first and second PDFs. He hasn't make the changes he said he made and he's adding new errors. He makes more changes, another PDF, Print, pack it up.

In case you're not keeping track, there are now 4 somewhat significantly different brochures. By the end of the day he has 125-150 brochures in the case that FedEx took away.

Bruce gets e-mails. Bruce gets phone calls. Bruce gets sent back to the office on Saturday to do the brochure the way they damn well told him to do it and print off another 200 to stick in his suitcase and take to the show.

I know nothing about any of this until Monday when all the editors come in and complain about Bruce.

So we're gonna develop standards and a new brochure from scratch so at the very least we won't have the violently changing styles from page to page.

Update: The meeting was on the second day of jury duty so I was unable to be there to push. Even stuff that all the designers and managers liked wound up being dropped. But, a layout person we've worked with before called and asked for work. The brochure will be given to her as soon as the text is finalized. Her style will be used from now on.