08.19.05 Loose Specs

specifications: A detailed, exact statement of particulars, especially a statement prescribing materials, dimensions, and quality of work for something to be built, installed, or manufactured.
Sounds pretty clear, doesn't it? I work in publishing, textbook publishing to be exact. This industry is so particular as to having set specs it can make your head spin, which it oftens does. There are discussions as to what font size and leading (the space between the lines) we must use because certain grades can't seem to understand text if the font is too big or too small or if the lines are too close together. My job here is to help with the process of putting the editors words, and the designers design together in one big happy textbook. I'm not really a layout person (unless needed) but more of a let's see what technology we can use to do this kind of guy. It's a position I love, I work with just a few really great people, we are like the special forces, it's cool. The only thing with developing templates for creating books is that we need to have the specs from the designers before we can create a template to reflect their design. The way it is supposed to work is that they book is designed with every possible type of layout already thought out and documented and specs created. Then the specs are signed off and we are set to go and develop templates, etc. Well, I have never seem this happen in the 4 years I've been here. We can be near the end of the creation of the book, and they are still creating specs. It's rather amazing. After each book, there are meetings where this issue comes up and it is determined that it will never happen again and sure as the sun rises, here we go again. But I heard a new one the other day as far as specs go. I was working on a customized book for the state of Illinois. When I handed off my work to my manager, it was basically right except I was told the positioning of certain elements was not correct. I asked if there were specs for this. I was told there were 'loose specs'. I had to laugh, what the hell is a loose spec? It's either positioned exactly here, or it's not. I guess that falls under the category of politicians lying. Well, I didn't lie, I mis-spoke. Time to get to work, loosely speaking of course...