New on Gwulo: 2023, week 48

Submitted by David on Sun, 12/03/2023 - 15:00

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General

A scene-by-scene walkthrough of the 1956 film Flight To Hong Kong, showing screenshots and explaining where in Hong Kong they were taken.
- Tung Chau Street, by philk
Notes on the 1841 Typhoon
Readers ask:
- Looking for contact details of Chris Neale, who published his mother's book Green Jade.

Update on the new Gwulo book

Yesterday I finally signed off the proofs!

That was a great feeling, as the rounds of edits to text and photos were starting to feel like they would never end. That's been the case with each of the books, but thankfully there's always a sudden rush at the end where everything slots into place.

The first glimmer of hope is when I see pages with their proper layout. I create the draft document in Microsoft Word, adding in photos to show how I want the page to look. When I've finished I'm pretty happy with it, but it always surprises me how much better it looks after Lilly, the designer, turns it into the layout for the printer. Here's page 12 as an example, with my Word version on the left, and the layout from Lilly on the right.

The next leap forward is when I see the cover for the first time. This is one of the last parts of the layout to be completed, so when I see this I know the end is in sight.

Front cover of Volume 5 of Old Hong Kong Photos and The Tales They Tell

Once I finally decide I've run out of things to change, we ask the printer to produce a proof copy of the book. The proof copy is printed on a digital printer, so it doesn't exactly match the colours we'll get in the final offset-printed book, but it is very close. This is the first time I get to hold the book, and is always a happy moment.

Below is the proof copy I received on Thursday. The pages are grouped into 'signatures', in this case groups of 16 pages that are printed on the same large sheet of paper, then cut and folded, and sewn together during binding. You'll see I've initialled each 16-page signature, which is the signal that I've approved the printer to go ahead with printing. BUT, you'll also note I've crossed these two pages, as I wasn't happy with the appearance of this image.

Looking through the proof copy I noted seven images I felt could be improved, which meant another late night's work in Photoshop. Lilly and Suk Woon (who works with the printing company to handle the actual printing) are both very responsive and quickly turned around my changes. Yesterday (Saturday) morning I received the new proofs for the updated pages.

The changes all looked good so I signed them all, handed them back to Suk Woon, and breathed a sigh of relief. Suk Woon takes it from here, guiding the book through the printing process.

We're nearly there! I'll let you know once I have the delivery date for the printed books.

People