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The Annoyance, OF grammar;

Forgive the title, but it proves a point.

Maybe I’m the wrong person to be writing about grammar, since I don’t believe mine is perfect, but I do believe that grammar is incredibly important when it comes to design. While many could argue that design is a visual artform, at some point, you’re going to have to incorporate some copy into it and if that copy is being seen by the public, it’s important to get it right.

I think one of the worst offenders that I can name off the top of my head are the WHSmith’s Christmas adverts, which have annoyed me since they were first aired two years ago. Their tagline is:

This Christmas. Think WHSmith’s.

How is that acceptable grammar? Anyone with even a basic knowledge of grammar knows that that is nowhere near a correct phrase. If anything, it should be:

This Christmas, think WHSmith’s.

Why have they used a full stop instead of a comma? It makes no sense.

I’m sure the majority of people won’t even notice it at least on a concious level, but I believe that on a subconcious level, most people will. It’s not going to make them buy less or think of WHSmith’s as a bad company, but I do believe that it speaks a lot about a company if they can’t get simple grammar correct. I don’t believe it speaks much about the design agency that was commissioned to create this advert, either. Little details like this make a big difference.

Additionally and perhaps sometimes a worse offender is spelling. I think one of the main spelling mistakes people seem to make – and businesses too – is “your” instead of “you’re”. If you’re writing your copy in Word, Word doesn’t know that “your” is the incorrect spelling because the word “your” is correctly spelt, but it’s certainly not the right word to use. So many companies don’t seem to proof their copy so it actually makes sense.

Another offender would be jargonese. In other words, writing something so that it sounds like you know what you’re talking about, but in reality, confusing your audience by beating around the bush with superfluous paragraphs. Your customer wants to know what you’re offering without having to read 5 paragraphs of blurb to get to it.

Language is such an important design element to consider when you’re designing anything at all. The copy can sometimes mean the difference between your customer being confused or content.

So, next time you’re planning on writing some copy, take another look at it, send it to a few people first. Whatever you do, don’t rely on your own judgement when it comes to copy because more often than not, because you’re writing it, it will make sense to you but not others. Proofread it yourself and then get someone else to as well. You’ll save yourself a headache when your customers are complaining about that full stop instead of a comma.

We are go

www.theworkof.co.uk is now up, running and ready for business.

The design, while very simple is aimed at showcasing my work, rather than being impressed with the website itself. Web design is not something I’m interested in, but I’ve made sure that the work is presented in a way which is easy to view and easy to navigate.

You’ll notice it’s currently snowing over there, too.

I’m really happy to finally get my site redesigned. It means I can now continue to upload any new work to it, whereas with my previous design, I was holding off on doing so. On The Work Of now, you’ll find many of my University-related projects, along with a good dose of freelance work. When I upload new work, check back here for a detailed rundown of what it took to create it.

The design, while at a finished stage will undoubtedly undergo some tweaks over the next few weeks, but for now, I’m quite happy as it is. How about you? What do you think? Leave a comment here or send me an email via the site. Thanks!

Hiccup

Although my site was ready to be launched yesterday, unfortunately, there has been some problems with the server, which has meant that the site has not been accessible. However, while the site has been inaccessible, but working in terms of being able to upload artwork, it’s given me time to think about how the design is used, rather than simply looked at. To design a website is one thing, but to actually make it function well and provide the best service is another thing completely. I’ve come to the conclusion that I got the form correct, but not the function.

On my current redesign, I chose to use 950x300px thumbnails as a way to display all of my work on one page. This reduces the number of clicks that a visitor has to make in order to view the artwork. However, what I didn’t realise until I began creating these thumbnails is that my work needs to be a lot taller than 300px in order to truly get a sense of the project. It just wasn’t looking right.

My inspiration for the site came from Daninko, a graphic designer in the US who had used something very similar to what I was planning and he seems to have pulled it off really well. However, upon looking at Daninko’s work again, I realised that a lot of it showcases one piece of work per thumbnail, whereas a lot of my work has multiple artworks per projects. For example, a corporate identity has a logo, business card, letterhead etc. It all needs to be displayed and 950x300px just wasn’t doing the trick.

Because of this, I’ve decided to go back to the drawing board with the site’s design, stripping away the complex programming that was present on the current redesign and going for something static instead, with simple html pages. I didn’t really want to do this, but it seems like the easiest and quickest way to get my site up and running. On the plus side, this design, unlike the design I was going to use has not taken weeks and months to develop, but two to three days of further thinking into what I actually want my website to do and present.

The Work Of preview This new design, while quite simple is much better at displaying information and to whet your appetite for it, here’s a small shot of it. The site should be ready within the next two days. Until then, I’ve taken down my current design and replaced it with a Coming Soon image, as the current design wasn’t really serving any purpose anyway. I’m looking forward to launching this site and hopefully driving more traffic to it and in turn, driving more traffic to this blog for comments on my work.

Stay tuned.

The Final Countdown

Last night I began the work of uploading all of my artwork to my newly designed site. It didn’t take as long as I thought, which is a good thing. It means that adding a single piece of work in the future will be quick and simple.

Once it was all uploaded, I had a quick browse through it and tried to put myself in the position of a potential client or visitor and I felt quite uncomfortable looking at my own site. I wasn’t happy with how it looked. I didn’t think that I had displayed my work well enough. After viewing it a few more times, I’m slowly coming around to the idea. It’s strange, really. I mean, I designed it exactly how it looks, no one else so in theory, I should be completely happy with it, but I’m not. I think perhaps what I’ve done is design the website as a standalone design, rather than considering what the site will be used for. I’ll see how things go. It’s certainly an improvement on my previous design, though.

The only thing left to do is point my domain name at the site, since it’s hosted somewhere differently to my current site and this is proving problematic. I should hopefully get that sorted within the next few hours. Hopefully. And then all that’s required is a little bit of patience for the domain to take its time repointing to the site. I’m excited about finally getting it launched.

It will be a soft launch, though. It’s coming up to Christmas, which means I can’t really do much self promotional work in terms of actually getting out there and making people aware of me, simply because it’s a little too expensive to get anything printed. While at University I can use the discounted printing to my advantage. I have a few ideas on how to increase my hits to the site.

One thing that I’m hoping I’ll be able to promote along with my site is this blog, which is proving more popular than I thought it would be, considering I’ve yet to link to it anywhere. Although it’s not been advertised anywhere, I’ve currently recieved 200 hits to it, which my article on the BBC News theme tune being a good four times more popular than any other post I’ve made so far. It’s nice to see that there are people really interested in the same kinds of things that I am.

Christmas break (isn’t a break at all)

Over the next three weeks while I’m on Christmas break from University, I intend to begin really ramping up the process of getting theworkof.co.uk launched. The back end is now pretty much complete, which means that all that’s left to do is begin uploading my artwork to the site. It’ll take a while because I have to format it properly, but I’m really looking forward to getting it all sorted.

Although I’m now on Christmas break, that doesn’t actually mean I can rest, unfortunately. There’s still plenty of work that I have to be getting on with. This includes two competition briefs and an essay to write. Additionally, I had to submit a competition brief just before my break, paying £30 just to enter. If I win though, I’ll win £2,000 and a four week placement at Pentagram. You can view the competition brief here. I’ll be going into more detail with this brief in another post.

I’m hoping that while I at least have a little bit of free time, I can begin the process of getting my name out into the open and start getting work in for myself. It’s going to be a long process and one which has many outcomes. None of which I’m very sure about. However, I’m confident that if I really put some effort into it, it’ll produce the results I want.

As I said in my previous post, my business cards were the first part of my plan and they’ve proven to be really popular with whoever I’ve shown them to. It’s really nice to see that they were money well spent.