Reasons

"Maybe I'm not from this world"

8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad...

1. Microsoft Office

When you have to send a graphic designer a document, make sure it’s made with a program from Microsoft Office. PC version if possible. If you have to send pictures, you’ll have more success in driving them mad if, instead of just sending a jpeg or a raw camera file, you embed the pictures inside a Microsoft Office document like Word or Powerpoint. Don’t forget to lower the resolution to 72 dpi so that they’ll have to contact you again for a higher quality version. When you send them the ‘higher’ version, make sure the size is at least 50% smaller. And if you’re using email to send the pictures, forget the attatchment once in a while.

2. Fonts

If the graphic designer chooses Helvetica for a font, ask for Arial. If he chooses Arial, ask for Comic Sans. If he chooses Comic Sans, he’s already half-insane, so your job’s half done.

3. More is better

Let’s say you want a newsletter designed. Graphic designers will always try to leave white space everywhere. Large margins, the leading and kerning of text, etc. They will tell you that they do this because it’s easier to read, and leads to a more clean, professional look. But do not believe those lies. The reason they do this is to make the document bigger, with more pages, so that it costs you more at the print shop. Why do they do it? Because graphic designers hate you. They also eat babies. Uncooked, raw baby meat.


So make sure you ask them to put smaller margins and really, really small text. Many different fonts are also suggested (bonus if you ask for Comic Sans, Arial or Sand). Ask for clipart. Ask for many pictures (if you don’t know how to send them, refer to #1). They will try to argument, and defend their choices but don’t worry, in the end the client is always right and they will bow to your many requests.

4. Logos

If you have to send a graphic designer a logo for a particular project, let’s say of a sponsor or partner, be sure to have it really really small and in a low-res gif or jpeg format. Again, bonus points if you insert it in a Word document before sending it. Now you might think that would be enough but if you really want to be successful in lowering the mental stability of a graphic designer, do your best to send a version of the logo over a hard to cut-out background. Black or white backgrounds should be avoided, as they are easy to cut-out with the darken or lighten layer style in photoshop. Once the graphic designer is done working on that bitmap logo, tell him you need it to be bigger.


If you need a custom made logo, make your own sketches on a napkin. Or better yet, make your 9 year old kid draw it. Your sketch shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to make. You don’t want to make something that’s detailed and easy to understand, because the less the designer understands what you want, the more you can make him change things afterwards. Never accept the first logo. Never accept the 9th, make him do many changes, colors, fonts & clip art. Ask him to add a picture in the logo. Bevels. Gradients. Comic Sans. And when he’s at his 10th attempt, tell him that you like the 2nd one the most. I know, it’s mean but remember: graphic designers are the cause of breast cancer among middle aged women.

5. Chosing your words

When describing what you want in a design, make sure to use terms that don’t really mean anything. Terms like ‘jazz it up a bit’ or ‘can you make it more webbish?’. ‘I would like the design to be beautiful’ or ‘I prefer nice graphics, graphics that, you know, when you look at them you go: Those are nice graphics.’ are other options. Don’t feel bad about it, you’ve got the right. In fact, it’s your duty because we all know that on fullmoons, graphic designers shapeshift into werewolves.

6. Colors

The best way for you to pick colors (because you don’t want to let the graphic designer choose) is to write random colors on pieces of paper, put them in a hat and choose. The graphic designer will suggest to stay with 2-3 main colors at the most, but no. Choose as many as you like, and make sure to do the hat thing in front of him. While doing it, sing a very annoying song.

7. Deadlines

When it’s your turn to approve the design, take your time. There is no rush. Take two days. Take six. Just as long as when the deadline of the project approaches, you get back to the designer with more corrections and changes that he has time to make. After all, graphic designers are responsible for the 911 attacks.

8. Finish him

After you’ve applied this list on your victim, it is part of human nature (although some would argue weather they’re human or not) to get a bit insecure. As he realizes that he just can’t satisfy your needs, the graphic designer will most likely abandon all hopes of winning an argument and will just do whatever you tell him to do, without question. You want that in purple? Purple it is. Six different fonts? Sure!


You would think that at this point you have won, but don’t forget the goal of this: he has to quit this business. So be ready for the final blow: When making final decisions on colors, shapes, fonts, etc, tell him that you are disappointed by his lack of initiative. Tell him that after all, he is the designer and that he should be the one to put his expertise and talent at work, not you. That you were expecting more output and advices about design from him.

Tell him you’ve had enough with his lack of creativity and that you would rather do your own layouts on Publisher instead of paying for his services. And there you go. You should have graphic designer all tucked into a straight jacket in no time!



by ghislain roy

How can you be so subtle...

It can never be too obvious, can it?

 

When you make ever-lasting gaps in the silence and stop to stare, I make inhumanly efforts to stand still, to keep my guard up, to keep myself whole. I'm so easily breaking when your piercing eyes slip their glances in my irises and keep me stuck to the ground because you know I don't want to be anywhere else. And those deceivingly well-placed words meant to get me speechless are nothing but sweet harassment. It's funny how in the deepest of the nights you come out of raging shadows and make them hush; it's funny how you bring all my fears to silence; it's funny how you keep me stuck together...

 

The slightest slip of the tongue and I'm drowning once again, the smallest sign of uncertainty and my walls fall to the ground in screaming aches and fluttery wings, leaving me fully exposed. I'm crashing into the ocean and stumbling down the stairs, spinning along with my incomprehensible thoughts with a million miles per hour in the middle of the highway, racing dreams and pulling truths out of crafty lies, cutting my own strings with a dull knife, singing hymns and yelling my lungs out for freedom. And you are always there to pull me out of the water and help me up when I'm hitting the ground, putting me back together and helping me break my bindings and overcome my bounds. You can understand me when nobody else does and you are not afraid of running next to me in my wild exploding getaways. You are the one who's most honest, you are the one cutting the strings and listening to the screeching vows. You are the one who makes it easier to breathe...

 

So tell me how can you see so easily through my eyes when I can't even read half of what you really are? How can you be so subtle when all I want is to be as obvious as possible? You already know I feel to much, don't you? You know that if you hadn't been so secretive, if you hadn't caught my eye and lit up my curiosity I probably wouldn't be standing here right now, writing this with trembling hands. I hope you can make out most of what I said even though it doesn't make sense and you already knew it by heart even before you started reading. I hope I'll have the time to read such a long novel because nothing brought me more pleasure till now...

 

 

[UNBREAKABLE]

 

[It's what makes the clock tick, it's what makes the heart beat... dripping like the sand of an hourglass, you have to taste it bit by bit.]

 

Please tell me you are ok, tell me everything is fine. Tell me you are still going to be here when I wake up. Because there is nothing I long for most than your embrace and there is nothing I miss most than feeling your heartbeat next to mine when we run wild in the storm because we are not afraid that the thunder and lightning might crush upon us; because you have me and I have you and there's nothing else in the world we need. We are like fire and ice, like a poison kiss on a lacerated heart that has been waiting for healing. We collide chemicals to create chain reactions, we set the Universe on fire and explode into millions of hopes and wishes stitched on the velvet of an uncertain future...

 

When the clock strikes 4 a.m. in the morning and the entire world is sound asleep, I am the only one who is painting dreams on a broken wall with a brush smothered in blood and tears, which ran down my cheeks so I would get to write this, scratching with a knife in the dead silence, maybe the spirits would hear me. I am the only one with my eyes wide open and my heart beating fast, waiting for you to come, waiting for your whisper saying "I am here, don't be afraid". I'm not. I break the time in two and don't have second thoughts, I can blow away the clouds and crack the sky, make a hole in the world and sneak out unnoticed. Because with you I can do anything... But maybe not everything...

 

Even though I seem a certain point, I actually run around my own axis in a burst of confusion, hitting the corners with the speed of light; and despite my obstinacy of being rebel and free, behind the strong porcelain mask of fearless personality, I have weaknesses and doubts, I fear and hate; I used to stumble and fall and not always get up but kept on going, crawling if I had to. Now you are here to help me out and the only thing I cannot do is to imagine my life without you in it. There is nothing I fear most than the thought of being left to run alone in the strongest of the hurricanes, in the deepest of the nights, left behind in some God forsaken corner of the Universe...

 

So lets set this ship on fire and sink our fears in the ocean. We are unbreakable, we cannot be seen or heard, we stop time and suddenly nothing makes sense when we are not together. My heart aches every time it looks on my right and cannot find you, it makes me reach out my hand to grab and pull you out of my dreams. And the night is tranquil and the stars are quiet and somehow all my thoughts turn to you.

 

I don't want to go back into the past. So lets make this last forever...