Dancing With Fire

- Reintroduction -

Leading up to the weekend, I threw myself into my work. The final deadline for our current branding project was fast approaching, the months whittled down to a few short weeks. The stress helped take the nervous edge off, and every time I interacted with Imran, we were so  entrenched in our work that there was no time to think of anything else other than making our next milestone. As a designer in the graphics department, I'd been assigned the social media section of the project and as soon as I got the branding key figured out, I was shelling out layout after layout with relative ease. As long as I took my time not to rush through the details and miss anything out, and I would be good.

Halfway through the week, I almost hit a wall.

Engrossed in the current layout arrangement I was working on, I was startled by a brisk knock on my desk. Gene, our creative director, had dropped by my work station. I instantly sat up straighter, as though she didn't know that everyone who worked here already had the worst posture. Designers and techies lived 70% of their lives hunched over. But this woman, almost 6 feet tall, reed thin, and silver haired, terrified my spine into being straighter.

"Gene! How - how are you doing?" I put my stylus down and smiled politely up at her. Should I stand when she's speaking to me? Should I offer her a seat? My station only had one chair...

"I'm well, Maya. A quick word. The social media layouts, I've just reviewed your latest submissions."

Her Lordship Gene, coming all the way to my desk to talk about my work? I thought of all the subtle detail I was trying to put in, hoping my design sense would come through. I beamed up at her.

"Ah, yes! I was trying to visually translate the - "

"You've completely missed the mark." She said shortly as she towered over me. Gene rarely said much, but when she did, her words were sharp and precise. My face fell as she pointed at my screen, towards the branding key, the one referenced in all my layouts.

"This hasn't implemented the change order sent by the project manager."

I stared hard at the screen, trying to measure my next words. The atmosphere around me felt tense.

"I... I received the notice about the colour palette last week... I implemented it in the layout with..." I stammered, trying to sound assertive. But the pride I felt in my designs earlier seemed to crumble quickly. 

"Not the just the colour palette, Maya. This entire section of the branding key," Gene tapped my screen calmly, but there was a bite to her words, "The email was sent on Monday."

I scrambled to find the email. How did I miss this? Monday? The day I spent being flustered about Imran? I opened up the email and quickly skimmed it, reading the changes. My heart dropped. It was a massive chunk that affected the target demographic and the aspects of the visual aesthetic that they were related to. For social media, it made half the work I did that week redundant. Gene could tell by the expression on my face that she didn't need to explain all that to me.

"Umm..." The other designers in the stations around me seemed frozen and I didn't know if it was Gene's icy stare rendering them in suspended animation. I struggled to think of how to respond. The pressure to find a solution that didn't include losing an entire week's work then and there was excessively massive.

"Well, I can redesign some aspects to fit a new layout... without changing the content..." I began vaguely, grasping at words, unconscious that I began rocking side to side nervously in my chair. Gene's frown bore down on me from her incredible height, and I lost my words.

A hand gripped the back of my desk chair, steadying it. "Yeah, that change order is a pain at this stage, but it's not that big of a deal."

I whipped around in my seat. Imran stood next to Gene, studying my screen, one hand holding my chair firm, an unlit cigarette in the other. Gene raised an eyebrow - silent approval for him to continue.