I am a member of the Organizing Committee of the Annual Convention of the Philippine Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (PSO-HNS) this year, again as part of the Publicity Committee.  At our last Org Com meeting on November 19, 2007,  it was decided ONLY THEN that the Society will subsidize a full page print ad to come out in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.  I had my work cut out for me, as the convention is already set to start on November 28, less than 10 days after that meeting, and our Society President Dr. Guevara wanted the ad to come out before the convention starts.  The Inquirer needed the ad materials submitted 3 days before the print date, so I had less than a week to come up with something fit for printing.

I was on my own.  No professional graphic artist was assigned to help me.  This was the biggest layout I had ever embarked upon.  Of the layout software, I only knew how to work with Adobe Page Maker.  It was very tense to wait for all those pictures, logos and Word files to come in by email from our indefatigable PSO secretaries.  I had a rough draft already by Wednesday night.  Thursday, I spent almost the whole day at the PSO-HNS office on their laptop, as I needed some more pictures, and I wanted Dr. Guevara to approve my layout.  I did some impromptu work on the convention artwork/logo in order for it to suit my ad design. 

Unfortunately, I had to leave the office by 4pm without seeing Dr. Guevara, and head off to the Inquirer office in Pasong Tamo, Makati.  When I got there, my contact Carol was out.  Her colleague Sunshine (or was it San Chai?) assisted me.  We set the print date on Tuesday, November 27, since our preferred Monday print date was not available anymore.  Bad news though, my Page Maker file does not seem to be compatible with the Acrobat software of the Inquirer computers!  The guy there asked me to find a way to convert my "movable" Page Maker file into a "secure" PDF format.

When I got home, I had to figure out how to work my Adobe Acrobat program, which I had never used before.  When the night ended, I was able to come up with the desired PDF file!!!  I emailed this much smaller file to Carol in the morning of Friday.  Carol called me in the afternoon, the layout people said that my pictures are too blurred and that my layout is too short by 7 cm! 

I had to do readjustments of layout using various heights and sent them all to Carol in the morning of Saturday.  Turns out Carol was on leave that Saturday, so I had to email them to Sunshine instead.  Sunshine told me that they chose the 20.84 inch height, but I should still try to improve my picture quality.

Sunday, I was asking people for advice -- my cousin Marvin in the States, and colleagues Dr. Lim, Keith and Angelo, who are photographers.   I turned the pics into TIFF files, as advised.  But in the end, the pics still looked blurred on the PDF.  Then on the last minute it struck me, maybe I should manipulate the Acrobat.  As luck may have it, the Acrobat indeed had a setting to make a file fit for printing.  (This was NOT the only thing I was doing that Sunday, as I also had to rush and prepare for a lecture I was tasked to deliver in a week's time as well!)

When emailed that last ditch effort to Carol on Monday, she finally gave me the thumbs up from the Layout people there later that day.  I am very releived, especially since the Society had spent P175T on that ad, and I had to make it worth the money.

So therefore, on November 27, 2007, Tuesday morning my ad finally came out on Page 4 of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, in the Main Section in glorious black and white.  (Of course, I submitted a greyscaled version of this one.)  Not too clear here... but I hope you get the idea of the layout...


The irony is, when the ad came out that day, it seems nobody even saw it.  Yesterday, at the first day of the Convention, (save from Angelo who had to borrow a copy from a neighbor in order to see the ad when I reminded him about it), no one else mentioned anything about it.  Just had to grin and bear it though.  Each person does his own job the best way he can.  It was a just another job for me to do, and I simply had to do my best.  Puts things into perspective, doesn't it?  I just have to say that I learned a lot from this harrowing experience -- the technical aspect with the Adobe Creative Suite software, dealing with ad department of a major newspaper, and more.