Why your client is a shithead

• September 9, 2010
  22 Comments // Miscellaneous

Why is your client acting like a shithead?

More often than not, it’s our own fault. At least in the sense that we can fix it, therefore we can take responsibility.

Very, very few people are naturally painful. They don’t go home and tell their kids exactly how to play with their toys, tell their partners that they are taking too long to do whatever or that their dinner guests need to move their plates a little to the left and down an inch.

(Alright, so there might be some people like this, but they really are shitheads and there isn’t much we can do about that.)

They’re nice people, just getting through the day, trying to get their work done. They have a boss they work for, a family they love, a book they cry at and a movie they laugh through. They have their own stresses and worries and don’t want us to add to them.

They’re normal. I know, I know, a whacky thought. But they’re human and nothing more nor less.

So why is it that they treat us so poorly? What did we do to insult them? Why do they ridicule us and force us to think unnatural thoughts involving the tearing of flesh from limbs by the teeth of angered hounds?

The Hallways of Adobe.com

• October 13, 2008
  2 Comments // Miscellaneous

Isn’t it funny? You spend hours upon hours staring at the software of Adobe, yet how often do you think to yourself that it might be worth exploring the Adobe website? Yeah, me either. Their software hides many passages often left unexplored, only to be discovered one lazy afternoon, leaving you wondering how you didn’t know you could do whatever it is you just found. The website isn’t much different, so I thought I might provide a few shortcuts.

Video Workshop

The video workshop is a great place to learn a thing or two or five about the most common Adobe programs. From how to prepare files for output in InDesign to how to use the Vanishing Point in Photoshop, it’s a great spot to learn. The videos are provided by online-education super-power Lynda, so they’re of the high quality you’d expect from the pairing of the two companies.

Design Center

Think of the Design Center portion of the Adobe website as a hub for all that which is worth looking at. Split into four parts, the Design Center is really a starting off point. A starting off point that would do well to have an RSS feed.

Starting with the Gallery, which showcases the work of creatives from around the world (spoken about more in depth below), there is also Think Tank, Dialogue and Tutorials.

Think Tank is the thinking-creatives section. Providing meaty articles on creatives and how they use technology to develop their art, it works well as a trigger-presser for the senses. It’ll get you thinking, it’ll inspire, stun and leave you mumbling “… why didn’t I think of that?” Then there is the Dialogue section which for the last few months has mostly been resupplying articles from the now defunct Adobe Magazine (a PDF magazine with past issues still available) and if you go a little further back in the archives is more of a “hey, this is cool, check it out” type posts either showing tutorials, the always great HillmanCurtis videos, almost-random notes or articles ranging in lengths from 150 words to 500. And lastly, there is the Tutorials section which is disturbingly lack-luster and to be honest, not worth the trip.

Design Center – Gallery

The Grammar Cheat Sheet

• March 29, 2008
  153 Comments // Miscellaneous

When you know the correct way to structure a sentence, the world becomes a scary place — you start to notice how many people get it painfully wrong. The ease of content creation that the web now affords us is making the problem worse, so why not get a basic understanding to help make your text a little more professional?

Before we get into this, let’s establish two things.

1. A lot of these ‘rules’ are different country to country, decade to decade.
   The way a proof reader or typesetter might lay out a page in Britain is different to how it might be done in America. How it’s done in 1985 is different than how it might be done in 2005. The styles of typesetting can change over time and throughout different regions.
2. Always be consistent, even if it might not be ‘correct’.
   Some companies will have certain ways they layout text, even if it might be considered wrong for their geographic location. But they are consistent with how they lay their text out and that is the most important thing. You don’t want your audience to get half way through a piece of text and get confused because you changed the way you laid something out.

Double Spaces

Never use them. Ever. Your high-school teacher was wrong, don’t ever use them.

Apostrophes

An apostrophe is inserted when letters are removed.
Let’s go to the race. (Let us go to the race.)
It’s going to be a great day. (It is going to be a great day.)

The other use of the apostrophe is to show ownership.
The runner’s shoes.
Mayor Swanks’ opening speech.

Tip: If the last letter of the owners name ends in s, place the apostrophe on the end without adding the extra s.