I was going to write about something else, but then this happened:
On page 145 of the 2015 ACC Media Guide, the designer forgot to take out the expletive he or she placed underneath Wake Forest’s 2014 schedule. As a Syracuse student working for the Daily Orange, the independent student newspaper of Syracuse, NY, this image was plastered all over my twitter feed. However, it was not long until the story was picked up by most major sports news websites like ESPN, SB Nation, and Bleacher Report. After gaining national attention, the ACC released a statement apologizing and noting that the guide has been updated to remove the expletive.
Okay, funny story right? So why is it going on my blog? Although this cracked me up, it scared the crap out of me. It scared me worse than seeing Syracuse’s 3-9 record again. But why does this scare me? I plead guilty. I occasionally will get frustrated or bored when designing something with a lot of copy and I will sometimes type out a bunch of curse words and then delete them. If you’re a designer reading this and are thinking to yourself, “Geez, that’s childish. I would never do that,” then you sir, are a liar. You’ve done it before and you know it. We’ve all hit a breaking point where our sketches end up looking like crap in illustrator or maybe the client isn’t paying us enough money for the time that we’re putting in. Or maybe, we just had to format 14 schedules (and that’s just one part of one page from a massive media guide).
However, regardless of how pissed off or bored one is, it is an awful thing when one forgets to delete their very visible outburst. It not only makes the designer look unprofessional but it makes the entire organization that one is designing for seem like a joke. There is a common expression in design that “great design is invisible.” I didn’t realize how true this was until I saw this tweet:
Although this is a guess, it helps illustrate a point. These three little words, buried inside of a huge booklet turned something seen by a few people in a small group into a national story (in the worst way possible). The designer was probably fired and the ACC is the laughing stock of the sports world. It is our job as designers to make sure this doesn’t happen in any of our designs. No matter how many editors or directors the design ends up going through, it is ultimately our job to make sure that every pixel is in the proper place.
And if this is one of those cases where a designer leaves his InDesign document open and a friend or coworker typed it in, you’re a dick.
But like I said, this was pretty funny so here are a few of my favorite reactions to this debacle.