It takes headaches to get ahead. The successful completion of a task always involves some kind of head-scratching complication that swallows a whole lot of time, spews out nonsense, and tests your patience.
I wanted to show off my work from the time I was editor of The 'Vine. I heard of a site called Issuu that specializes in Web publishing. It would be a great way of displaying my portfolio without sending large attachments with my emails.
I uploaded my pdfs and saw that everything looked good until I realized that the gutter in the center of the page was messed up. The left page seemed to bleeding into the right. It could safely be ignored by any other less cultured designer, but it offended my aesthetic sensibilities.
Ever encountered a problem that you just couldn't put into words? How do you search "messed up gutter in Issuu?" After some ninja googling, I figured out that I had to re-save my files as single-page pdfs as opposed to double-page.
The solution was simple enough, if only I had the original project files on hand. I backed up all my work but I kept files on both my laptop and the computers at school. Once the year ended, I copied over all the files to my laptop, the caveat being that my files had the same name, which gave me lots of duplicates.
After I found the files I needed among the duplicates, I scoured Adobe Indesign for an option that allowed me to switch the file from double to single-page view. I couldn't find the option, so I looked into modifying the existing pdf to make it compatible instead.
I couldn't find a way.
In the end, I re-saved the files with default settings and uploaded them.
It worked.
The problems that solve themselves are the worst kind, because what are you going to do if they come up again?
Stumble around blindly until you fall into the solution?
Sounds good to me.
