Last week we reached a critical point with this book: all pages done and accounted for. It’s the first time in over a year that I haven’t had the stress of putting together more pages.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do layout with a small color copy machine, scissors, and removable scotch tape, I print out color contact sheets (maybe 6 to an 8-1/2 X 11″ sheet of cheap Epson paper), lay them out on the layout table, then blow up or reduce on DCP-9040CN Brother copy machine.  I print out text in 2 and 3 columns. then scotch-tape the photos and text to 18″ X 12″ layout sheets. Some of them that look great as is go directly to MacMeister Rick, others go to nomadic artist David Wills, who adds his painterly touch in tuning up design.

I like doing the first step in a kind of old-fashined way. Maybe a bit like the sound of vinyl records. If I’m not mistaken, there’s almost a movement these days to look back at pre-digital art and design and music and see what’s missing. It’s not that “…the old is new again,” it’s more that the old is being reexamined for layers of richness that get filtered out in the bits and bytes process. Anyway, I start by hand.

I’m still shuffling pages, like a deck of cards. It’s assuming its own form, its own order. Pretty exciting for me, after all this time. In fact all of us are looking at this evolving book. Pretty unique!