I've just had a very stimulating five days producing the text, illustrations, artwork and layout for a CD of 17th-century music - booklet, back inlay and disc label... At first they had engaged a professional designer, but they found his ideas inappropriate to the project, and he held to them so firmly, that... - I've done lots of layouts and graphics for myself, and maybe a couple of hundred www-pages, but it's the first time I've done anything that ambitious for professional printing, and I knew that there were some very specific requirements - and that I didn't know what they were! So I was rather excited to be asked, though very guarded about whether or not I could do it well enough for the pros. The downside of it was that the deadline was unrealistically close, and meant five 18-hour days, and five hours sleep out of the last 48 - not to be recommended! ... After my part, the job was to go the the repro. house, then the whole thing is sent to the Sony studio in Austria - they make 200 million CDs a year, all automatised, so it's got to be right first time! - and it goes on sale for the University's 365th anniversary in two weeks...

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