A WHOLE CAN O’ PEAS

I’ve said before that Graphic Design doesn’t generally kill people, but it can’t half conspire to make you look stupid every once in a while. The problem is that it’s so easily done. Sometimes you suffer from a kind of word blindness that is hard to explain, and it’s always worth remembering that context is everything. During my years in the small ads game, one of the more vital aspects of the job, especially as it moved over into electronic media, was getting the phone number and address right. Now you’d think that was kind of obvious, but you’d be amazed how easy it could be to get that vital bit slightly wrong.

Once upon a time there was a rather important report being sent from the office I worked in. You could tell it was important (although not actually secret or sensitive in any way) because some of us lowly and humble employees were asked to read it and check it for errors. At least three of us checked the copy of this once oh-so-vital report, the content of which is now long forgotten, but which might have reflected poorly on our office if it had been full of mistakes. It was only after we had all pronounced it to be ‘perfect’ and ‘error free’ that it was given a final quick cursory read through and it was discovered that an entire paragraph had been repeated. It was all spelt perfectly, so perfectly in fact that we felt we had to say it twice. We were looking at the individual words, you see, and not the bigger picture. You might have said that ‘you couldn’t see the paragraphs for the words’ and I probably would have done if I’d thought of it at the time (and wasn’t feeling so embarrassed at having missed it…). I had another colleague once tell me that, in a previous job, he had proof read an entire catalogue and approved it for print, and when it came back from the printers, all 5000 copies had to be pulped because he’d misspelled ‘catalogue’ in 72 point lettering on the cover. Or, come to think of it, was it a calendar?

There’s a road junction here in Lesser Blogfordshire with a set of traffic lights where the great and the good (or just those extracting the Michael…) tend to hang old sheets with messages painted onto them to help their friends, family or colleagues to celebrate the fact that they are “50 TODAY!” or some such. It’s a good spot. Very visible. Especially as many drivers have to wait at the lights for a couple of minutes. If you don’t want to know that the world already knows that you are in fact “50 TODAY!” it’s probably best not to go that way of a morning. Some of our more canny local business people have noticed what a good site it is and started to put advertising for their businesses there. I was sitting at those lights myself yesterday evening when I happened to notice this very banner hanging there and started wondering whether canapés were something of a mystery to the fine people of Lesser Blogfordshire…

“’Ere, Bri…?”

“Yeah…?”

“’Ow d’yer spell ‘canopy’? Can-o-py or can-a-py?”

“Why?”

“Had a customer on the phone, giving me the copy for ’er banner. Definitely made it sound like it ’ad an ‘a’ in the middle…”

“Probably a southerner. You know, from ‘Darn Sarth’”

“Maybe… Unless she meant ‘can of peas…’”

“Don’t be daft lad!”

“Yeah, but at least you could eat a can of peas. ‘Champagne and Canopies’ what’s all that in aid of then? Do they serve ’em drinks outside or summat?”

“S’pose so…”

“Seems a bit odd…”

“The customer is always right lad…”