Oh my good Lord. "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." Where's the Lord when you need Him? Nowhere, it would appear, when the National Police come a-knocking. "We're coming to get you, Seraphim." Not even the fact that Seraphim is the archangel who looks over the police could prevent this. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And there was worse still. This was the angel of Spanish. Serafín Castellano. Banged up. Corruption. Allegedly. What else would it be?
How terribly ironic that the national government delegate to Valencia (a Partido Popular one) who bears the name of one of the two official languages of Spain - the one that the PP typically has a preference for - should, firstly, be the government delegate in Catalan-variant-speaking Valencia and, secondly, that he should find plod banging on the door waving around a corruption charge only a few days after the regional elections. The ones in which corruption didn't play a part. Or did, depending on which PP apologist was speaking. Rajoy must be spitting feathers. Those of an angel's wings with the name of Castellano-Spanish, to boot. Spanish was under arrest.
Well, did corruption play a part? According to the Balearics PP government spokesperson Nuria Riera, it didn't. It was all the fault of errors in communication. Which was something of an admission for the PP spokesperson to make. It was all her fault then. But Nuria was holding her hands up - not as the police were waving guns in her direction - but in confessing that there would now be a need for "self-criticism": the same self-criticism that was going to be applied after the stuffing at the Euro elections last year but which wasn't.
What a wretched week last week was for Nuria. She was the one with the awkward task of publicly announcing election results on the telly. She could be seen visibly shrinking as the awful truth was being revealed. Much as she might have preferred for there to have been one final burst of communication error, it was impossible: her party was going down the pan. But while she insisted that the corruption hovering over the PP with its now angelic, non-Catalan symbolism was not a factor, others fessed up and said it was. Like, for instance, the president of the PP in Palma, José María Rodríguez. Well he should know, having only avoided a rap thanks to the statute of limitations.
Nuria was left to struggle with the communication breakdown between PP Balearics and PP Central. There is going to be a party congress at the end of the summer, she insisted. Oh no there isn't, said central office. You'll have to wait until after the general election. Why this apparent difference of opinion or communication error? Nothing to do with José Ramón Bauzá wishing to clear the PP leadership decks in the Balearics and prepare his campaign to be elected as a PP Balearics delegate to the national parliament? Or was it one final - and vain - attempt to demonstrate that PP Balearics was more regionalist than its critics would suggest and wasn't a mere puppet of central office?
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Communication. Show all posts
Monday, June 01, 2015
Friday, April 29, 2011
Keep It Simple: Design
"The Bulletin" has been re-designed. As part of a stable that boasts the Catalan daily "dBalears", which won an award for its makeover, the result of this re-design should be positive.
The "dBalears" revamp was contemporary in one very strong regard. Its look owed and owes much to internet presentation. It is perhaps an irony of digital competition that the print media should ape this competition, though it is not a surprise. Good layout on a screen demands clean lines and appearance; the same principle applies to whatever format.
There is, however, design and there is design. No, make that that there is design, design and design. Design that is simply no good, that which is good, and that which is good but completely misses the point.
I was in a bar the other day (the Jolly Roger). There was a poster on one of the wooden posts. I looked at it and I continued to look at it. I had to go back and look again. Finally, someone (Grizz) came in and without asking pointed at something on the poster and announced that a complaint should be made. There it was. What I had been unable to see. The date.
If you are going to have a poster for an event, in this case a horse spectacular in Alcúdia, one fairly basic requirement is that you clearly communicate when it's taking place. This poster does nothing of the sort. The reason for my being unable to locate the date was how it had been designed.
The problem with the design was that the date was not only to the left, it was also vertical. Its positioning and style broke two fundamental rules. One is that the eye tracks to the right, unless you're an Arabic reader and the eye goes the other way, in which case you will have just read "daer tsuj evah ...". While the main visual look of the poster, that of a horse, strangely enough, grabs the attention, it is the information that needs to be communicated which is as important, and being informed as to when the show is happening is far from unimportant.
Just as the eye tracks to the right and not to the left, so it also, or rather the brain, needs to adjust to a vertical visual and more specifically text that runs vertically. It's why I couldn't see it, even though it was literally staring me in the face.
There is nothing wrong with breaking rules, but design which may be good (and to be honest the overall poster design isn't that good) has to keep to the point. Which is to communicate.
In Mallorca, there are an awful lot of designers. It seems, at times, as though whole school years leave education armed with a design qualification. There are hordes of them, armed with Photoshop and Illustrator and with innovation firmly in mind. This has spawned some remarkably good graphic work. The standards of Mallorcan design are high, owing at least something to an artistic heritage on the island.
However, the craving for innovativeness can get in the way of the message. Similarly, a lack of appreciation as to audience can also obscure what it is that is meant to be conveyed. I'll give you an example.
A few years ago, the Pollensa autumn fair had a visual that was meant to be some sort of agricultural tool. You could have fooled me. It looked more like a sex aid. I was completely baffled by it. While it may have meant something to the local Mallorcan population, it meant nothing to anyone else. Too much promotional material suffers from a failure to communicate in different languages, but when the visual imagery misses the point of its audience, or potential audience, then any innovation becomes pointless.
Simple really is often the best. Take design for restaurant adverts. Tedious may be the almost default style of advert which shows a terrace or an interior, but it is actually important. It was a message that came over when someone was analysing different designs as a tourist. Those with shots of what the place looked like were more meaningful than something more arty that didn't. The message was very powerful, because the very audience the adverts were being intended for was being influenced by one of the most powerful things a restaurant has to sell - its look.
And look is everything. Adverts, brochures, newspapers. And simple is also very often everything.
N.B. The re-design of "The Bulletin" is from Saturday, 30 April. This article, forwarded as usual for reproduction in the paper, would appear to have been vetoed on the grounds that the design team responsible for the re-design might be a bit "touchy". Can anyone explain why? Given that this article had been knocked out earlier than would normally be the case, as with a now alternative, in order to help them out for their grand re-launch (at a time when I don't have a lot of spare time), I feel I have every right to be a tad pissed off. Perhaps sensibilities towards contributors and remuneration might be as strong as that afforded to a bunch of designers.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
The "dBalears" revamp was contemporary in one very strong regard. Its look owed and owes much to internet presentation. It is perhaps an irony of digital competition that the print media should ape this competition, though it is not a surprise. Good layout on a screen demands clean lines and appearance; the same principle applies to whatever format.
There is, however, design and there is design. No, make that that there is design, design and design. Design that is simply no good, that which is good, and that which is good but completely misses the point.
I was in a bar the other day (the Jolly Roger). There was a poster on one of the wooden posts. I looked at it and I continued to look at it. I had to go back and look again. Finally, someone (Grizz) came in and without asking pointed at something on the poster and announced that a complaint should be made. There it was. What I had been unable to see. The date.
If you are going to have a poster for an event, in this case a horse spectacular in Alcúdia, one fairly basic requirement is that you clearly communicate when it's taking place. This poster does nothing of the sort. The reason for my being unable to locate the date was how it had been designed.
The problem with the design was that the date was not only to the left, it was also vertical. Its positioning and style broke two fundamental rules. One is that the eye tracks to the right, unless you're an Arabic reader and the eye goes the other way, in which case you will have just read "daer tsuj evah ...". While the main visual look of the poster, that of a horse, strangely enough, grabs the attention, it is the information that needs to be communicated which is as important, and being informed as to when the show is happening is far from unimportant.
Just as the eye tracks to the right and not to the left, so it also, or rather the brain, needs to adjust to a vertical visual and more specifically text that runs vertically. It's why I couldn't see it, even though it was literally staring me in the face.
There is nothing wrong with breaking rules, but design which may be good (and to be honest the overall poster design isn't that good) has to keep to the point. Which is to communicate.
In Mallorca, there are an awful lot of designers. It seems, at times, as though whole school years leave education armed with a design qualification. There are hordes of them, armed with Photoshop and Illustrator and with innovation firmly in mind. This has spawned some remarkably good graphic work. The standards of Mallorcan design are high, owing at least something to an artistic heritage on the island.
However, the craving for innovativeness can get in the way of the message. Similarly, a lack of appreciation as to audience can also obscure what it is that is meant to be conveyed. I'll give you an example.
A few years ago, the Pollensa autumn fair had a visual that was meant to be some sort of agricultural tool. You could have fooled me. It looked more like a sex aid. I was completely baffled by it. While it may have meant something to the local Mallorcan population, it meant nothing to anyone else. Too much promotional material suffers from a failure to communicate in different languages, but when the visual imagery misses the point of its audience, or potential audience, then any innovation becomes pointless.
Simple really is often the best. Take design for restaurant adverts. Tedious may be the almost default style of advert which shows a terrace or an interior, but it is actually important. It was a message that came over when someone was analysing different designs as a tourist. Those with shots of what the place looked like were more meaningful than something more arty that didn't. The message was very powerful, because the very audience the adverts were being intended for was being influenced by one of the most powerful things a restaurant has to sell - its look.
And look is everything. Adverts, brochures, newspapers. And simple is also very often everything.
N.B. The re-design of "The Bulletin" is from Saturday, 30 April. This article, forwarded as usual for reproduction in the paper, would appear to have been vetoed on the grounds that the design team responsible for the re-design might be a bit "touchy". Can anyone explain why? Given that this article had been knocked out earlier than would normally be the case, as with a now alternative, in order to help them out for their grand re-launch (at a time when I don't have a lot of spare time), I feel I have every right to be a tad pissed off. Perhaps sensibilities towards contributors and remuneration might be as strong as that afforded to a bunch of designers.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
All The Time In The World
I thought to say that the Spanish don’t understand time. But I have reconsidered. They understand it only too well. They take the abstract and extend it to its extremes. How else can one explain the – literal – moveable feast that is midday and hence lunchtime?
Perhaps it’s a trait of Spanish culture that they can treat the abstract with such regard. Picasso was but mere canvas to a national pastime, as it were.
The mañana ethos is too facile a description of the Spanish ambivalent adoration of time. It implies a tomorrow, when that tomorrow rarely, if ever, comes. Except when it suits.
To the northern European expat conditioned – variously – by WASPish or Prussian punctiliousness and punctuality, the void that is Spanish time can be hard to fathom.
And so is the Spanish attitude to communication. This is especially unfathomable, given that the Spanish nation has had a mobile phone surgically grafted onto to one of its collective ears. Yet, they don’t phone. They never phone.
I say all this from experience. I still don’t get Spanish time or Spanish communication. How long have I been here? I can’t say. To do so would be to seek to make tangible the abstract. Perhaps I should go native.
To other matters … Here we go again. Summer’s barely on us and the papers are screaming about jellyfish. Unlike last year’s plague, which didn’t happen, it might be a tad more likely this year. Apparently the little blighters have been loitering with intent in the waters around the Balearics during the winter rather than pissing off elsewhere, as is normally the case.
Some of you may know that the Spanish for jellyfish is “medusa”. I have an awful confession to make. I was once in a rock band that was called Medusa. Wasn’t my idea, honest. It was a lousy name especially as we were part of what was the at-the-time south-west Surrey music scene that spawned Graham Parker, The Jam and The Members. Medusa. How embarrassing.
(PLEASE REPLY TO info@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE. TA.)
Perhaps it’s a trait of Spanish culture that they can treat the abstract with such regard. Picasso was but mere canvas to a national pastime, as it were.
The mañana ethos is too facile a description of the Spanish ambivalent adoration of time. It implies a tomorrow, when that tomorrow rarely, if ever, comes. Except when it suits.
To the northern European expat conditioned – variously – by WASPish or Prussian punctiliousness and punctuality, the void that is Spanish time can be hard to fathom.
And so is the Spanish attitude to communication. This is especially unfathomable, given that the Spanish nation has had a mobile phone surgically grafted onto to one of its collective ears. Yet, they don’t phone. They never phone.
I say all this from experience. I still don’t get Spanish time or Spanish communication. How long have I been here? I can’t say. To do so would be to seek to make tangible the abstract. Perhaps I should go native.
To other matters … Here we go again. Summer’s barely on us and the papers are screaming about jellyfish. Unlike last year’s plague, which didn’t happen, it might be a tad more likely this year. Apparently the little blighters have been loitering with intent in the waters around the Balearics during the winter rather than pissing off elsewhere, as is normally the case.
Some of you may know that the Spanish for jellyfish is “medusa”. I have an awful confession to make. I was once in a rock band that was called Medusa. Wasn’t my idea, honest. It was a lousy name especially as we were part of what was the at-the-time south-west Surrey music scene that spawned Graham Parker, The Jam and The Members. Medusa. How embarrassing.
(PLEASE REPLY TO info@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE. TA.)
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