Reclaiming Attention to Detail

Wayne Thompson, Australian Type Foundry

Twenty five years ago, when I was on work experience with a signwriter, I watched him painstakingly craft a miniscule serif, by hand with his sable brush. We were standing on a busy footpath on a scorching summer’s day. I naively asked him why he paid so much attention to the fine details when, looking around me, it was obvious few passers-by gave his work more than a brief glance. His answer? “The day I say ‘that’s close enough’ is the day I go out of business.” Granted, that was a long time ago. Times have changed.

Contrast this with two examples from more recent times: A primary school near me has a public message board on its fence, facing a busy road. Short, uplifting messages are placed here, such as: ‘QUIET FUTURE LEADERS AT WORK’. The lack of attention to punctuation gives an ambiguity to the message which is both amusing and irritating. The fact that the message was constructed (probably) by students is not a reflection on their education, simply a clue that the principal of the school is very busy. Too busy, presumably, overseeing staff and drowning in bureaucracy to deal with such minor transgressions.

Another of my favourites is the tabloid press’s penchant for leaving question marks off their headlines, apparently because we don’t need them anymore. Thus the headline ‘Is this man a murderer’ is now acceptable. Technology allows us to do things faster, cheaper, better. Better? Where are the days of the craftsman? Where are the apprentices who actually learned their trade before being required to apply it? That’s the attitude which seems to have changed. Quality isn’t important anymore. We pretend it is, but beneath the surface, we all know that we just can’t afford it.

Computers came along with the promise of making everything faster. But, hidden in their swag, was a host of nasty side effects such as transfer of responsibility for accuracy, abolition of attention to detail and free fonts.

On top of actually designing, designers are now expected to also be pre-press experts, software engineers, hardware technicians, diplomats and—worst of all copywriters. We’ve all been there. Here’s a typical scenario: Some suit, fresh out of their marketing degree, swans into the studio with your proof and says ‘Remove all the hyphens. And add these 12 extra paragraphs. No, you can’t increase the size of the ad. And anyway, why does it look like crap?’ You glance at their new copy. The expression is dreadful, the message sanitised and it’s riddled with spelling cataclysms. Hell, did they even read it? Again, the responsibility for accuracy falls upon you.
My response was to take it by the horns. I proudly declared that hyphens are there to help us. I gently pointed out a better way of expressing that sentence. Sometimes, I simply re-wrote the copy myself. As a designer, it’s easy to lapse into ignorance, because the incentive to be a specialist is just not there any more. A victim of economic rationalism, specialties have fallen by the wayside in favour of the more bankable ‘rounded’ approach.

I often wonder whether the special features I include in my fonts, such as alternate glyphs, ligatures and carefully crafted kerning pairs, are valued or even used at all. We all want to do a good job. We all want to immerse ourselves in our ‘craft’. But it’s increasingly becoming a luxury. Deadlines are constantly getting shorter, budgets tighter, accountability for results greater. All because we have to make money. What does anyone do when under pressure to meet a budget or deadline? They look for ways to do it faster. And how? They cut out anything that’s superfluous, like attention to detail. And, subsequently, the quality of the final product goes straight out the window.

Consider the consequences of creative erosion. Continual ignorance of previously held standards leads to acceptance of a new, lower standard. Would Michelangelo be a household name today if the church elders had placed a budget upon his head? The culture of today’s agency or design studio is so dollar-driven that the system rewards us for cutting corners. The commercial environment makes it easy to settle for average.

Words, typography and design are inextricably linked. Standards in one cannot be eroded without affecting the quality of the other. If you’re a designer, also strive to be a grammatician. If you’re a writer, strive for font-nerddom. Take responsibility. Think of the last time you made use of a font’s full character set. Was it ligatures? Small caps? Did you put both the acutes in résumé ? Of course not. You didn’t have time. So why should I bother to put them in? Here’s why: because if I don’t then neither will the next guy. And the next. Pretty soon it will become accepted as standard. And, eventually, we’ll all be saying ‘that’s close enough’.

So, next time a suit pressures you to ‘run it’, ask yourself this: what are my standards?

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Filed under: DG magazine 127