Role (credited): Production Design Support (with Jason Silverio, Production Lead)
Actual Contribution: Led production of the event listings interior (pp. 11–185, ~3,000–4,000 events), building the end-to-end workflow from data cleanup to automation and prepress.
The WhatWhereWhen is Burning Man’s official events guide, distributed to every participant (~70–80k copies annually). Entirely crowd-sourced through the online Playa Events system, it has grown from a 1990s handout into a 150–200 page book containing thousands of events—one of the largest temporary publications of its kind.
Contributions
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Developed Excel + XML workflows to clean and restructure thousands of event submissions for InDesign import
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Established a scalable event-entry design system (styles, layout rules, category icon set)
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Automated formatting/error cleanup with GREP, Find/Change, and scripts; refined manually as needed
- Preflighted and QC’d files, resolving artwork issues and ensuring correct handling of spot and mixed inks, and delivered press-ready pages under deadline
Cover and front matter by Mike Hampton & Hal Robins. Production credits: Jason Silverio (Production Lead), L. Manley (Production Design Support).