Remember last year, when I made all those drawings for those boards? Well, that meeting came around again this year, and Publicis wanted it BIGGER! and BETTER! this year, which is fine. The only problem is that last year I just made the drawings and other graphic designers assembled the imagery, and this year it was just me, working alone. For the meeting, the boss-folk wanted a giant wall, 32 feet long and 8 feet tall, covered with stats and facts about Publicis in 2009. I originally designed it with chunks of information scattered all over it with tasteful white space between each fact, but I was told by the big-whigs that they pretty much wanted no white space at all. None. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want, that’s what I’m gonna give you. I’ll cram so much stuff in there, you won’t be able to walk straight.” And the final product looked like this:
I was true to my word. And not to toot my own horn, but it was a big hit. All the execs loved it, the attendees loved it, it’s being printed and hung in other offices around the country, etc. This is what it looked like in the meeting room.
That wasn’t the only thing I worked on for this meeting, oh no. That was just the biggest thing. There was the presentation itself, for which I made the slides. There were the gift bags, for which my mother and I sat all Saturday making labels and cutting ribbons like Victorian factory workers. And then there was the nametags.
Each person got one, and it was shaped like a conversation bubble. I cut out about sixty of them. For your own personal information, I would like you to know that when you cut out cardstock with an X-acto knife for seven hours in a row, your index finger looks like this:
But the meeting is over, it went smashingly, everyone was well pleased, and I don’t have to think about it until next year. Hoo-ray.