At the crossroads

Imagine a magazine with 20 articles, produced in three languages. Each article is approved by an average of four people. Each person’s comments must be carefully reviewed, one by one, and the same corrections must be made to each language version.

Let’s do a quick calculation: 20 x 4 = 80 and 80 x 3 = 240.

240 rounds of comments before the magazine is finalized! In a best-case scenario, it takes about ten minutes to process one set of comments.

New calculation: 240 x 10 min = 2,400 minutes, or 40 hours.

And that’s just dealing with the comments. The volume of email is also heavy when scheduling appointments for interviews and photo sessions, not to mention during the comment rounds for the layout.

A project coordinator’s day is filled with professional email management, tight scheduling work, careful monitoring of the process and quickly responding to the unexpected situations that inevitably occur in the magazine production process. All this while gently nudging the project participants – the Compositor employees, the cooperation partners and the customers!

The most important tools for the job are a good memory and common sense. But experienced project coordinators also have some tricks to keep their memory on track – starting with follow-up charts and email folders….

The paradox of communications culminates in the project coordinator’s work – creativity requires unwavering order in the foundation and processes.