I Got Beat Up By a Product Catalog
How to survive huge, overwhelming projects with tight deadlines.
Have you ever struggled with balancing all of your responsibilities and meeting your deadlines during a large design project? I sure have, and I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the experience for yourself. I don’t actually have 4,675 steps to follow. What I do have is a story from my own experience, and a couple key survival techniques that I build into every large project these days.
Like most creatives, I’m a bit of a multimedia specialist. Though my writing is focused on design, I have experience with photography, videography, live and studio music production, lighting, and an array of digital communication tools. From time to time, I take on a project that requires that I wear multiple hats. It’s a rewarding, but challenging process.
At about this time last year, I was working with a Texas-based wheel manufacturer to develop their 2018 product catalog. If I remember correctly, it was a 48-page document with a LOT of inventory to cram into those pages. We were working toward print and distribution deadlines so that the manufacturer could get the catalog in dealers’ hands before the end of the year. Over the course of six weeks, it was my job to:
- Re-brand and re-design the catalog.
- Collect and organize all inventory photography from the previous design archives.
- Photograph and edit all of the new products for the 2018 lineup.
- Edit vehicle mock-ups (we didn’t have time to shoot the wheels on model vehicles, so we licensed photos and photoshopped the wheels on. And, I might say, they ended up looking DANG good).
- Submit weekly digital drafts.
- Print & ship physical proofs.
Needless to say, it was a big project.
The craziness started on Day 1. We got a knock on the studio door and found an employee from the manufacturer standing next to a box truck loaded with large, heavy boxes. Each of the boxes had a custom wheel in it, and there were at least 20. We stacked them nearly to the ceiling in a corner. If it wasn’t clear before, it became evident that I had my work cut out for me.
If only I could go back and tell my college-photo studio self that my bright and bold future as a creative professional would land me in a studio shooting wheels for 8 hours straight. How glorious.
When I wasn’t soaking up the rays in the studio (ha!) during those first couple weeks, I was in front of the screen coming up with cover concepts and new branding guidelines. My client, to be honest, was wonderful to work with. He was trusting, but a great communicator. He knew what he liked and didn’t like and provided the feedback I needed to make significant progress. The fun part, however, was that his business created a crazy personal schedule for him. So, like clockwork, he always managed to call while I was at lunch, or eating dinner…
This project is literally going to eat my lunch. Only 30 hours of editing and 47 pages to go…. [Insert coffee here]
To make things even better, I had filmed a couple of weddings that I needed to edit in the same timeframe. There was one evening where my fiancé and I were in the studio editing a video at 10pm. I hadn’t been saving my progress, and Adobe Premiere crashed. Yeah, just hit command+S. Always. I’m hitting it now on this draft.
BTW, I only use DaVinci Resolve as my NLE these days. I won’t make a penny for saying this, but SWITCH TO RESOLVE!
Not shockingly, the Adobe crash started a chain reaction of crashes, not the least of which was my head against my desk. Two hours of work were gone. I needed to make progress, so onward we pushed into the night. About fifteen minutes later, another knock on the studio door.
More wheels?? At 10:15pm??
Fortunately, no wheels this time. My fiancé ordered a warm brownie with ice cream from a local dessert shop that, quite lucratively, delivered warm brownies and ice cream into the wee hours of the night. From that experience, I drew a couple essential conclusions about how to survive when you’re overwhelmed with work.
If you expect that your project will change as you work on it, then you’ll be delighted by your clairvoyant prediction when the changes come.
Expect the unexpected.
When you take on a large project, it’s good to set reasonable expectations. Without a checklist and a deadline, you’ll never get the thing done! But you have to keep your mind open to the fact that it will change.
In fact, if you expect that your project will change as you work on it, then you’ll be delighted by your clairvoyant prediction when the changes come.
Expect. The. Unexpected. Your client willcome up with new ideas when he sees the first design concepts. Your boss willsuggest that beating your initial deadline could be good for business. Another product willneed to be added to the catalog at the last minute.
There is absolutely no way for you to predict what these unpredictable events will be, but you can save yourself a lot of heartache by preparing yourself for them. Be sure to work well within the timeframe assigned to you so that you can handle changes as they come.
Also, I like to incorporate something I call the Chick-Fil-A rule when things get crazy toward the end of a project. Even if a request requires a change order and additional billing, I tell the client that it’s “my pleasure” to make their changes and that I’m committed to a quality product that meets their needs. In most cases, this is what they expect from a professional. It’s not for the client so much as it is for me — to remind myself that I’m grateful for the work and committed to serving my clients.
Don’t go it on your own.
That warm brownie didn’t just get me through a long night of re-editing. It lasted me all the way from Thanksgiving until Christmas break.
Why?
Because I was no longer alone. In my experience, the single worst feeling when I’m overwhelmed with work is that there’s no one around to bail me out;I’m alone in this hole, and I have to dig myself out of it to succeed.That’s only true if you choose to make it true. The worst thing that you can do when you’re overwhelmed with work is isolate yourself.
Here’s the deal. If you burn yourself out in the middle of a project, or even in the middle of the workday, you are going to be farless productive for the latter half of the time you set aside to accomplish your tasks. I would have never stopped to realize that everything is ok and that I’ll survive the loss of an hour or two of work if I hadn’t invited my fiancé just to come and be with me that evening.
If you’re working from home and you have to go late, stop for dinner.If you’re in the office and totally stressed about getting things done by 5pm, don’t skip lunch! Even if it means standing in the break room and scarfing down your meal with your co-workers, give yourself the opportunity to stop, reset your mind, and come back ready to get 💩 done.
It’s going to be different for everyone, but don’t go it alone. Set aside time to refresh, invest into those around you, and allow them to invest into you.
Allow margins for failure.
Finally, allow yourself some room to fail. In the case of the product photography from my catalog above, I set aside an additional studio day for re-shoots, just in case I found an error in post-production that needed to be corrected. I left my gear set up and had the lighting ready to go. And, you guessed it; I had to go back in for another hour or two after I started working on editing. This would have killed me if I hadn’t expected it.
When you can, work ahead of schedule and reserve time to fix the things that break along the way. None of us are perfect, and you, just like me, will have to go back along the way and trim up around the edges. Give yourself time to do this, and forgive yourself when you make mistakes that cost you time.
If you’re wondering, I was able to complete the catalog two days ahead of schedule. And yeah, it was hard.
No project is going to go how you expected it, and things will get hard from time to time. Rather than putting your head down, pick it up and see that things are still bright around you. Then get to work. I know you can do it!
How do you build in the safeties that you need to survive through a large project? We’d love to hear below!
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