Mishpacha insiders know that the creative process is often a lot messier than the polished final product
Rav Ovadia Yosef was niftar on a Monday, after the weekly magazine had already gone to print. We all got a call to come back to the office, to produce a special tribute supplement – while the levayah was taking place.
Usually the art studio imports ready text into our programs as we design articles, but this time we inverted the process. Our art team quickly built a design, collected photos, and began building the “look” of the supplement as our writers and editors were still creating the text.
Our offices at the time were in the Har Hotzvim area, and the historically large crowd flooding Jerusalem for the levayah stretched all the way down Golda Meir Boulevard. As I worked, I could hear the buzz of the procession happening outside, and I really wished I could have been out there with everyone. It’s not every day you see hundreds of thousands of people from different backgrounds coming together like that.
But by the time I wrapped up my work, it was all over. I knew I had my own contribution to make, to help readers appreciate the gadol we’d lost — but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d missed out on something truly significant.
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