All-round oddness

On Monday an email plopped in to my inbox announcing that I was to be the Art Director of a new magazine and listing others appointed to roles within the publication, it read like the royalty list for a small country.

Being a friendly soul I emailed the list introducing myself professionally (I should have said 'Hi, does anyone know what this is all about?'). Piles of emails followed along the same lines 'Hi Mrs Art Director (person who knows what is going on), I'm Mr/Miss high profile designer/photographer. I've been doing this for years, I'm really good at what I do, the project sounds interesting, how much will I be paid etc...'. A common thread ran through the emails, not one person had ever read or seen the magazine. Spanning a couple of days and many emails I spoke to and emailed a lot of people, all the proposed participants had one question still unanswered 'what fee is being offered?'.

By Thursday I had written the project off as unrealistic. Unless produced by unpaid new freelancers in need of a portfolio, by my costing the magazine - which I had learned was being entirely funded by the editors, who had full-time jobs elsewhere - would have staff costs in the region of £20,000 before printing. That day, I made a final request for an outline of the fee and was offered a sum six times less than what I would quote for such a job.

Rather than being an irritating waste of time the whole exercise was joyous, one of meeting new people and learning how many of 'us' there are out there working hard in a professional way on our bread-and-butter jobs but still looking for a fantastic creative project to get our claws into.

Had a client of mine been approached in this way and asked about whether to get involved I would have advised them to steer clear as it sounded too good to be true - funnily enough this is exactly why I followed up the initial email. I'm having a drive to say 'yes' more and to follow untrodden paths. The editor actually seemed like a nice guy, and who knows where meeting all these lovely creative people might lead. I really do wish them well.

A really funny aside to this tale is that when I looked back at my reply to the fee offer I realised I had mistakenly added one too many zeros to the and of the amount making me the highest paid Art Director ever - no wonder I didn't hear back!

Workwise, Friday was wiped out by another flood in a family member's home. Soaked furniture smells nasty, watching a teabag float down the hall is just strange. The fireman told me he had seen '...dogs and chickens..and even people floating around in the past'. I think I'll stick with my arty floaty job for now.

I have so much to do, The Continence Review magazine is about to go to last proof. I suddenly received two rewrites last Wednesday after everything had been finalised so had to reset five pages and throw out any ideas of pretty pictures as the authors had done that authorly thing and expanded the copy. Wem Carnival programme is nearly finished, I like this annual job, it's the only local work I do and it's generates a warm squishy feeling about committees doing good things not being groups of bickering people who hold up work.

One of my favourite clients The Legal Easel came to see us last week, they had never been to Shrewsbury and we just wanted an excuse to buy nice biscuits. The Legal Easel's director Dr Sheinman wants to rework his publicity so I have to give this some thought next week. Rural Support which has now split back to county level needs new leaflets and Karen from Martins Dried Flowers needs some quotes made pretty. Unusually for July, it's all go here.