Post redesign - 22 days to go

The key to the Post design is clean, sharp pages that can be quickly redrawn when we are tight to deadlines, so templates and paragraph styles are the key. Helping redesign a newspaper - particularly one as loyally protected as the Post - is an exciting challenge, but as with many exciting jobs, there is an awful lot of legwork that is not at all exciting.
So, hour after hour is spent shut away in an office upstairs bringing in a template for page 6, and re-saving it with a different shaped lead, or a taller picture, or so that the lead and the second lead are designed as a linked package. Then bring in page 12 and do the same...then do all the pages you have done so far, but this time with a 2-column ad, and then a three column and then....i'm sure you get the idea.
As you can imagine, the first person to point out that the 114th layout I have done is missing a byline on the single-column story gets a two-word answer: "Of course"....of course I'll change it because it has to work properly or there is no point doing it.
So what is left to do? Plenty.
Lots more layouts, which I will probably keep doing until the last few hours before the first new Post goes to press at about midnight on Sunday October 19th. The editor, Marc Reeves, and I have to decide whether we want to switch one of the headline fonts (which will mean a bit more re-saving of templates....). I also have to play around with the colour of the masthead, which could probably do with being a bit darker (any opinions about dropping 'The' from the title - or hadn't anyone noticed?)
I've got a big piece of paper on the wall here where I scrawl notes to myself for the next day - it says 'puzzles' 'masthead?' 'boosts' briefs' captions?', that sort of thing. A few minutes ago I wrote 'SENSE-TEST IT' in large letters. Not particularly grammatical, but it reminds me (much as "It's the economy, stupid" did for Clinton) that all the work logically carried out so far has to be easy to use, so I tend to recruit another planner and just put it all in front of him or her and tell them to produce a page. How easily they do it is how successful I've been - or not if that pesky byline is still missing....
Finally (I'm definitely going to put more pix on the blog next time) I need no reminding that this is not a soul-less production line. This is my paper (sorry Marc) and if I mess it up I'll never forgive myself. If it ends up being worse, if people actually stop buying it or if anyone picks it up on day one and says "..what a shame they didn't...." then you will find a very sad Scouser propping up the bar at the Bull's Head. But I won't be, because you'll love it and you'll wonder why we didn't do it years ago. Honestly. You can trust a Scouse journalist - can't you?