Seven Seconds to Attack

William Morris: The Wood Beyond the World
Photo by Naoko Takano 

A couple links I kept from last week, both from the always thoughtful and readable Craig Mod.

The first is a great article on how online reviews could be made better, particularly on Amazon. What really struck me though was reading it on the same day that Apple announced their new products. Social media, and especially Twitter, were filled with snark and bile, almost all of it completely content free. Just hate for the joy of being a hater.

The reason we are upset by Amazon trolls is that their actions truly damage — both psychologically and economically. And yet these damaging acts themselves are devoid of rigor: Seven seconds to attack that which took 700 days to produce. 

With little effort the attackers attach their bile to something greater than that of which they are capable. This dissonance — venom effortlessly and thoughtlessly spat upon the diligence or precision of a work of art — is from where the tension is born. It’s what enrages us. Especially those of us who create. And so, the factor dividing the “good” reviews from the “bad” is very often, simply, the presence of rigor. Of being thoughtful.

Emphasis mine. The thing that struck me on Twitter, and made me stay away for the rest of the day, is that many of the people gleefully spewing bile, especially in light of their occupations and skill sets, could have made thoughtful contributions and critiques. But they didn't. Sneering for social points has come to take the place of talking about craft.

Which leads me to the next article. Lets Talk About Margins.

Thoughtful decisions concerned with details marginal or marginalized conspire to affect greatness. 

The whole article is a wonderful meditation on having craft matter. Matter a lot. Something I repeat over and over again as I am teaching, is that “The front of a label or piece of packaging will get you an interview. The back will get you the job.” Every mark we make effects every other mark (though, sometimes, the marks we don't make matter the most) and each requires our full attention. Everything, even the bar code (maybe even especially the bar code) and ingredients list, deserve the full attention of our craft.

One of the first lessons I truly absorbed at Methodologie (then TeamDesign) was about the importance of detail, and it came from a conversation about page numbers. The senior designer I was assigned to, Paula Richards, was putting what seemed to me in my inexperience, a huge amount of time into figuring out where the page numbers should go on an annual report. She walked me through the big considerations about where they should go, (the biggest being, don't put them under the readers thumb) and about making sure they were right there when you look for them, but not when you weren't, and then said what has stuck with me all these years. “Every element on the page should be polished like a jewel.”

What would our profession, and by profession I mean all of the disciplines that fall under the large umbrella of visual communications, be like if we all concentrated more on craftsmanship—on polishing each part of a page or screen or level or interaction or installation—than on polishing our snark to score points with our peers?