Insider Info

Ask any desktop publisher what the best part of the job is, and chances are they'll say it's the act of creating. A lot of satisfaction comes from putting pieces together to make a whole, like a brochure that someone actually reads and uses.

"[There's] nothing quite like making things," says Ward Stirrat. He is a desktop publisher and designer. "It's the kind of satisfaction carpenters get, but without the grunting and sweating and broken thumbnails that come with swinging a hammer.

"Every job is weird, exciting and frightening, all at once."

Stirrat recounts one particularly challenging job. "A large real estate developer was developing a $30-million building. They came to us and said, 'We have 10 days before opening; we need a brochure.' It's a six- to eight-week job, but it has to be done in 10 days!"

That meant the brochure had to be designed, paper stock had to be ordered, a typeface had to be chosen and photos had to be scanned.

"It's November and a lot of the shots necessary for marketing shouldn't be shot in November, so already there's a photo logistical problem. The view is a major marketing benefit of the building. It has a stupendous 360-degree view on the top of a hill.

"But it's November and it's mucky and the sky is dirty and hazy and it's raining all the time, and the city really looks terrible. So here we are needing to get a panorama shot and we get up at some ungodly hour and stand on the top of the building waiting for sunrise to occur."

Stirrat tried to get a shot that emulated a nice summer morning with sunshine blushing over the rooftop. However, the equipment froze in the gale force winds. He and his assistant had to keep the equipment warm with butane torches until the sun came up.

The tale didn't end there. The team decided the brochure needed "trinkets" -- little drop-in shots of the types of items one would find in an upscale condo. But where would Stirrat, who was doubling as the photographer, find what he needed to set everything up and shoot in such a short time?

He ended up taking objects from his own residence to a photo studio. When his wife came home, she thought they had been robbed.

"I had to take the bed sheets, wrap everything up -- all of our good china and pillows off the bed and our vases and candelabras and everything else -- and haul it to the studio to take photos of it that afternoon."

Then there was the writing. "We wrote the whole thing in an afternoon," he says.

What else? "We had to get a custom towel hand-embroidered with the logo....We were at the printers doing press checks at 2 and 3 in the morning...calling in a lot of favors."

In the end, Stirrat and his team made their deadline. They got paid. And they even won an award for the brochure.

But it's those unyielding deadlines that Stirrat likes least about the business. Some people are not suited for that kind of pace, and there can be a fair amount of burnout.

"Clients are unrelenting in their expectations and their ability to drive you insane with unreasonable and impossible requests that they fully expect you to fulfil, and uh [sometimes] not get paid for."

After 20 years of working for newspapers and magazines, PJ Perdue has started working for herself. She has a home-based desktop publishing business. With the new company, she has made the switch from print to Internet and likes both media.

"I love desktop publishing," she says. "I don't know which I prefer, paper or online. I have so many good memories and associations with the printed medium. When you are working in print, you have a tangible product that you can send to your mother or store in the closet."

When you design a website or do an online newsletter, Perdue says it's very intangible unless you go to the trouble of printing it out. "It's a product that people see and use without ever touching."

If you're thinking about getting into desktop publishing, Perdue says you will need a good eye for layout. You have to love the printed word and love looking at newspapers and magazines. And you have to be a good speller. If she had a slogan for her company, it would be: "E-Creatrix Internet Studio -- where everything is spelled right."

She claims she was born a perfect speller. "It's been a curse," Perdue says. Misspelled words jump out and assault her vision at every glance. She can't pick up a magazine, newspaper, flyer or envelope without a typo smacking her in the eye.

But what might seem a curse to Perdue is undoubtedly a blessing to her clients. According to Perdue, nothing makes a bad impression like error-infested text. People may not notice when it's done right, but they sure notice when it's wrong.

Michael Payne runs his own desktop publishing business in Florida. "It's a very stimulating business. Interesting because it's always changing. You're always facing new products," he says.

He says you must have a broad range of skills and interests if you're going to work for yourself and do complete projects. "You better know something about photography, writing, and have a little bit of artistic ability."

According to Payne, you don't have to be an illustrator. "If I need an illustration, I can find something similar, scan it, suck it into a program,...erase the parts I don't want and then make a skeletal version of it in postscript. Then I'll suck that into [another program] and manipulate the lines and add whatever else I need. I wind up with an original illustration -- and I never had to draw anything."

The downside, says Payne, is working on your own. "Sometimes you just want to tell somebody a joke and hear them laugh."