Waiting for client amends and drinking a frankly unhealthy amount of Lapsang Souchong.

When you rush a job to get it to the client by COP on Friday (at their request), so they can check it over the weekend and get amends back to you "by first thing on Monday morning, so we can hit deadline" – why do they always interpret that as "I'll get the amends to him sometime before midnight on Monday and that'll be fine"?

ANGRY UPDATE EDIT:
Phone call at 8:50am – "Amends will be right with you."
Email at 10:15am – "Amends will be right with you."
10:35am – Still no amends, and now they're not answering the phone. And it's an already tight-on-time video-editing job that needs to be completed and with the client for tomorrow morning. Gnnnnnnnnnn.

RELIEF UPDATE EDIT:
Amends received. FINALLY.

INEVITABILITY STRIKES UPDATE EDIT:
Got halfway through the amends and, guess what? Yup. More amends arrived. Some of which change or undo amends I've already made. I am now officially downing tools until they get there act together and supply me with one coherent set of amends.

Thanks pop - I think this has gone general release now, my CC account just pinged with an AI update.

Got one of these A3 LED powered light-boxes from Amazon. Can heartily recommend it to any fellow illustrators / designers out there. Took a punt on it as it's so cheap, but it seems pretty robust and works really well. At least as good as the last one I had, which came from Argos and cost more than twice as much.

I have a recent tale to make you feel better. Maybe. Or at least to make you glad it hasn’t happened to you. I probably shouldn’t share it publicly though, so I’ll PM you.

Because I'm an idiot, I've only just got round to downloading Kyle's Summer 2018 Megapack of P'shop brushes. They're really rather good. Heartily recommended, if you haven't already etc.

Hahahaha! At least you’ve got the files then mate! Go for a coffee...

Final lol. There’s no such thing.

Edit: in other news, I’m having to make an INDD document into an editable PPTX because grrraahhhhhh clients. Kill. Me.

Oh, they're not having to do it, I am.

For years we've designed the decks for this client in InDesign, as they have quite an intricate style, aren't bothered by transitions etc., and I work MUCH faster in InDesign than anything else.

But they frequently re-use assets / pages and just change the text. So instead of having to come through me all the time, they want a PPTX template that looks like the InDesign work I do for them, but that allows them to simply edit text and changes images. That way they only need to come to me for major changes or new artwork. Makes sense, but by crikey, getting PowerPoint to produce anything that looks decent (they don't use Keynote) is like climbing Everest without oxygen. And carrying Bella Emberg. While you're on fire. And being shot at. And chased by tigers. Which are on motorbikes.

Thanks mate. Can you PM me her details please? No good for this job as I have to get it done today, but definitely worth having her deets for the future.

Oh, Im sure that'll happen. But they have me on a 2-day a week retainer, so basically I tell them what I think they should do, but in the end I do whatever they want. I advised them it's a bad idea, but they want to try it.

*Gallic shrug*

See also: kerning, leading and tracking issues. “I think it looks fine”.

*endless screaming*

GIMP, a free photoshop alternative.
Supposedly not as straight forward as photoshop so you could just get the photoshop 30 day trial.

Depends on the level you want yo go to. I didn't think a quick logo chucked together would warrant going full vector which can be harder to pick up.

If it’s just a one-off use, I’d go for a trial of Photoshop or Illustrator.

If you haven’t done anything with vectors before, Illustrator will be a pain in the arse but you’ll get better results.

All depends what space you’re using the logo in. Digital = raster (pixels). Print or signage = vector. When it comes to logos it’s Photoshop for show, Illustrator for a pro.