GENE

Print Blank Pages

ihatemornings — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 20:54:36 +0100

We learned an important lesson while printing GENE 01.

We spent ages getting the format of GENE right. At first we were all talking in pubs and houses over beer and wine, showing each other books we liked, justifying our emotional response to a particular paper size or texture. Later Daley and I sat with an old copy of InDesign on my not-quite-dead 2004 MacBook Pro and tinkered with margins and font sizes. Later still, Daley worked out which bits went where and how to make the flow and balance of the pages work. Then Nick nitpicked about ligatures and I questioned the dashes.

Daley and I sat in front of InDesign a month ago admiring the finished product, every single millimetre of every page positioned to perfection. We experimented with outputs: PDFs, preflights, packages, folders, linked and embedded images and fonts. We settled on a method that seemed to work (booklet print), and exported the single pages as a PDF too just in case.

I took the files down to the printer, and a few days later I went back to check out the test print. The paper looked beautiful, the printing was crisp and it was exciting to see it finally exist in physical form. I gave the printer the OK to print the rest.

Wrong

It was only after about 6 hours of flicking through the box full of printed copies that I realised something was wrong. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it, but once I realised it was obvious, staring back at me from every spread: the pages were all in the wrong place.

Every single left hand page was on the right and vice versa, except for the facing plate at the beginning. All the duoble-page musical scores were split over a page turn, and Daley’s graphic novella was all out of whack.

The reprint cost us dearly, but it was worth it. The corrected layout is beautiful and we all would have felt bad to put out a half-baked publication. I’m not writing this for your pity. I’m writing this because there is a lesson to be learned.

There is an option somewhere in InDesign’s print dialogs labelled Print blank pages.

Beware

I can’t yet figure out why you would ever want to spend hours and days laying out your document perfectly, attending to every tiny detail, checking and double checking, only to set an option that removes random pages and ruins the whole thing. But it’s there, and we must have clicked it.

So let this be a lesson to you all (but more importantly a reminder to us for next time). And if you want some expensive-looking wrapping paper, let me know.

GENE 01 exists! More details on the new GENE website or just buy...

ihatemornings — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:52:27 +0100

GENE 01 exists! More details on the new GENE website or just buy it right now from the GENE shop.

Great little letterpress video. Letterpress is sexy.

ihatemornings — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:53:34 +0100

Great little letterpress video. Letterpress is sexy.

adventuresinmonotype (Nick Gill): I’m planning to make a number...

ihatemornings — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:49:36 +0100

adventuresinmonotype (Nick Gill):

I’m planning to make a number of videos, showing the rough mechanics of how various letterpress processes work. Since I happened to be casting leads when I had that thought, that’s the first one I made. Ta daah!

I could watch letterpress machines all day.

Unexpected success: how to deal with it badly.

ihatemornings — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:22:53 +0100

Unexpected success: how to deal with it badly.:

In which Nick explains exactly STEP BY STEP how to get 23,806 listens on Soundcloud.

"The Guardian are live blogging the weather. Seriously."

ihatemornings — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 14:49:55 +0100

“The Guardian are live blogging the weather. Seriously.”

- @ConsumerRevolt

First pull (via @nickfuckinggill)

ihatemornings — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 12:32:22 +0100

First pull (via @nickfuckinggill)

The front cover comes together… (via @nickfuckinggill)

ihatemornings — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:50:02 +0100

The front cover comes together… (via @nickfuckinggill)

Almost there

ihatemornings — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:13:36 +0100

I reckon the first issue of GENE might actually exist soon. It’s only three months behind schedule, which isn’t bad considering the group of people involved. I have a very poor concept of timeliness, and tend to leave the house when I need to arrive somewhere. Juju is worse, leaving the city at the time when she should be arriving in another city. Daley often arrives places on time, but equally often spends weeks building raised beds for the lettuces. Nick is always busy. Miranda actually submitted her work on time, so she wins. George, Lizzy and Xander might make it for issue 2.

Nick is letterpressing the covers this weekend and Daley’s tidying up the last of the typos. I’m putting together a website. Luckily it’s going to be worth the wait.

"Music and theatre should belong to nobody, everybody." - Hannah Nicklin compares 'DIY' music with 'DIY' theatre

ihatemornings — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:14:00 +0000

"Music and theatre should belong to nobody, everybody." - Hannah Nicklin compares 'DIY' music with 'DIY' theatre:

ilivesweat:

Daniel Yates of Exeunt Magazine sums up ‘DIY’ really usefully as “small scale, culturally distinctive, alternative producers of experience” (link). That sounds a bit academic-y, but I think at the root of the ethics of DIY is something born of a place and community, and which offers a distinct alternative to the monoculture that thrives on top-down structures, (the mainstream music industry e.g.) and ‘one size fits all’ models of entertainment.

It’s all about DIY. And the theatre/music comparison is fascinating and useful. Sounds like a conversation I need to have with Nick.

Photo

nickfuckinggill — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:10:53 +0000

We Are The Lesser People

candysaysjuju — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:51:33 +0000

As the greater man is busy discovering how to colonise Mars or irrigate the moon, my comrades and I meet to discuss how we can sustain a living. We are all artists of one kind or another and we struggle because the arts unfortunately are neither encouraged nor valued in our society or in our education system. We are the lesser people. We put our energies and all our talents into creating independence of the mind. We spend our lives fighting to get people to accept another truth that the greater men have probably already understood, instinctively at least, but disbelieve. We carry a different message. We are totally against those who use styles and furnishings made fashionable by businessmen who use snobbery to make money. Don’t get me wrong, we are not against money or working but whilst we live, we want our lives to be clean and positive in the creation of a community. We don’t want people to be told to go and join a health club or a social club simply to hide the fact that they are unloved. Let’s create a society where we work alongside one another and help each other. We live with the lesser people. We are the lesser people. We are the failures but by standing for what we believe, we will break open new roads. We are determined. This is how we spend our days.

An update from London

ihatemornings — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:33:03 +0000

An update from London

Success, and Farming vs. Mining

quitexander — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:19:15 +0000

Success, and Farming vs. Mining:

A splendid little piece (written about the software industry but I think it could be applied to most creative endeavours) from Wil Shipley. Also, his blog has a nifty titular pun.

Photo

nickfuckinggill — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:05:55 +0000

Photo

nickfuckinggill — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:01:13 +0000

Photo

ihatemornings — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:03:00 +0000