Ian Katz, the Guardian's features editor, writes:
Phew. We made it. Just.
Because not all our very Vorsprung Durch Technic presses are operating at full speed yet, G2 deadlines had come forward by two and a half hours. That meant that, despite the rather bleary eyed team showing up at 8.30, the last hour or two were distinctly hairy.
First there was the trouble with the big letters on the Short Cuts spread spelling TIT (no evidence that this was a subversive ac) then there was the page that just wouldn't fit.
If you're a design purist don't look too closely at page 3 of G2 tomorrow - with 10 minutes to go the production editor, Paul Howlett, instructed the chief sub, who had been manfully trying to stretch a piece by Kevin Bacon to fill the required space, to "squeeze the column width". A year and a half of obsessing over design and it comes to this - if the art director only knew.
Fortunately G2's own art director was too busy to fall off his chair in horror: with 20 minutes to go he was still deliberating over what shade of purple to colour the new G2 logo.
As the Guardian's perpetual deadline busting culprits, we allowed ourselves a brief celebration after sending the final page of Monday's issue - then started work on Tuesday's. Our new deadlines require that we begin each day with much of the layout and editing for the following day already done. As I write this, my deputy, Esther Addley, is sitting with Ed Vulliamy, editing an extraordinary expose of horrific brutality by a regime with which Britain has cosy relations. The art director is flicking through pictures of the aftermath of a massacre - and worrying about what colour to make Wednesday's logo.
