I FELT THAT...

You know, it was all going so well. I’d been through four drafts of a nice new two metre high piece of artwork and the various tinkerings and modifications were getting narrowed down to something that seemed to be working. I had given my advice on certain matters of marketing which had been mulled over and taken on board, even though some of them had ultimately been rejected. Equally, some of the suggestions coming back to me had seemed perfectly valid, so I saved off a low resolution jpeg of the final artwork with one further question attached as to a matter of the content, bundled the whole lot into an email and hit “reply” (We have to consider such things, you know, we artists in the digital age – it’s not all just “colouring in” you know…).

But then I noticed that I’d not hit “reply”, I’d hit “reply all”…

Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!

An entire committee of mysterious people who were not the people I had been dealing with at that point and, in my mind at least, were not the people who I had been doing this unpaid favour for, were listed on the original email and suddenly they were all about to get a copy of my lovingly (and, I might add thoroughly professionally) crafted artwork.

Damn and indeed blast!

Sure enough, within the hour I had some feedback. Thoroughly unwarranted feedback based upon only the slimmest amount of actual knowledge, and which seemed to have no knowledge whatsoever of the development time spent creating a consistent style (or “corporate identity”) over several variants which I had been trying to achieve across the various artwork items I had been producing for them in my free time over several recent weeks, but nevertheless feedback it was. This was from someone who, apparently, runs a professional cleaning company and who, it seemed, just felt like sticking their oar in. Strangely, I would never email someone who ran a professional cleaning company and tell them what I “reckoned” about how to go about cleaning things, I’d just assume that they would know what they are doing, but, because it’s artwork we’re talking about, apparently everyone’s an expert, and, also apparently, the professional artist doesn’t have the faintest clue about what he’s doing because everyone else always knows better when it comes to something visual.

How does the old saying go? “Opinions are like ar**holes, everybody has one…”

“I feel that it is difficult to read the small text at the bottom. (It) need(s) to be bigger/clearer/bolder. (It’s) lost with the colours, etc.” (I’ve corrected the text - we have to consider such things, you know, we artists in the digital age – it’s not all just “colouring in” you know…). You feel that…? I certainly felt it. Right between the shoulder blades.

Given that all that they had seen was a very low resolution image of a piece of artwork 25% of actual size, sent through at a size guaranteed to be both basically legible for content and proof-checking but small enough not to slam into too many firewalls and server file size limits (we have to consider such things, you know, we artists in the digital age – it’s not all just “colouring in” you know…), why he felt qualified enough to be compelled to comment rather flabbergasted me. Actually, it didn’t. It just really, really bloody well annoyed me. “This is precisely why I stopped doing this kind of thing for people”, I found myself thinking as I suddenly remembered all those bitter memories of so many years ago which came flooding back to remind me why I got the hell out of there in the first place.

The other problem is that he might well be right. I just happen not to think so. That’s the problem with artwork, there isn’t a particularly “right” answer. You just have to trust your instincts and I happen to trust mine more, that’s all. Plus, if you’re not overly familiar with these things, you really, really need to see the whole thing printed full size before messing around with the design. So many times I’ve changed things on screen for people only to have to change them back when the print turns up. That’s why we call it a “design instinct”, I suppose. Sometimes you really do just know when something feels right.

I remember the story about Michelangelo and the statue of David when one of the Cardinals said that he thought the nose was too big. Up the ladder with his hammer and chisel and a handful of marble dust sped old Mickey, and, tapping his hammer and chisel together, he sprinkled down the dust onto the Cardinals and came back down again. “That’s much better!” said the Cardinal and went happily off on his way. I don’t know whether that’s a true story, but I do rather hope that it is.

Of course, I’ve seen this all before. When I worked in the late, lamented small ads game, every Tom, Dick and Harry seemed to think that they knew better, and would buy the tiniest advertising space of about 60mm square and insist on trying to cram a small novel’s worth of text into it and then demand that every single element was big and bold, and it usually turned out to be my fault that I couldn’t change the laws of physics and make it happen for them. (We have to consider such things, you know, we artists in the digital age – it’s not all just “colouring in” you know…).

Equally, in my later career spent in a room full of engineers, software designers, directors and other “creatives” so far up themselves that it was almost unbelievable, I was unlikely to stroll over to a workstation and comment snidely upon a bit of dodgy looking coding or a particularly pathetically-worded half-completed powerpoint presentation, but everyone felt that it was perfectly fine to come over and tell you how rubbish they thought your latest artwork was. It’s the visual arts, you see. Everyone has a pair of eyes, so everyone thinks they know what they’re talking about, and any professional decisions made by a graphic artist are obviously, by default completely wrong when faced with such wisdom from those untrained in such things.

Conversely, when presented with something that looks utterly pathetic that some idiot has knocked up on their PC, it is apparently bad form for the professional artist to be snotty about it because you will then be told that “it does the job” and people will go away from you feeling annoyed and upset that you haven’t compared their party invite to a work by Leonardo da Vinci, convinced that the artist’s “trained eye” is a myth, and fully subscribing to the “it’ll do” culture…

Anyway, I composed a furious email consisting of (basically) the words “You’re” “Wrong”, “no”, “again” and “wrong” rearranged into a suitably dismissive order and repeated as often as seemed necessary, and then I deleted that and composed another email instead and, because I was feeling slightly less petulant than I ought to have been, I deleted all references in this new message alluding to “myopic morons”, “no good turn going unpunished” and “obviously not knowing what I was doing”, deciding that I could save them for the blog later where nobody was likely to read them. After all, it is always wise to have a certain amount of tact and diplomacy in your dealings with people. (We have to consider such things, you know, we artists in the digital age – it’s not all just “colouring in” you know…).

I then cropped the offending area and saved it as a jpeg file and attached it to the email and sent it through at full size just to show them that I really didn’t think that it was going to be a problem. I wasn’t convinced that anyone would believe me, after all, when you’ve only got all those years of experience to fall back on, what do you actually know? Sadly, I will no doubt end up feeling compelled to change it to the kind of hideous chunky font that should only ever be put on a home-made party invite.

Look, I know that doing someone a favour should never an excuse to produce something substandard, but I’d like to think that people might just give the people they ask to do these things just the slightest amount of credit for knowing what they are doing and a little bit of appreciation for the fact that they are doing it at all. Happily, the people that I was actually doing that particular favour for are lovely enough that I really, really would never want to let them down, but as for the rest of them, well, there’s a particular circle of hell reserved especially for them which, unfortunately, I don’t believe in…

Damn!!!

Still, I do feel a lot better for getting that out of my system. I know, I know. I’m such an ungrateful wretch and I can’t take a bit of criticism. I’m dreadful, I know that I am, but you’re not going to change me now, well, not unless it’s for the worse, anyway…

The attached file I sent through was called “FFS”, by the way: “Free - Full Size” (honest!).