February 19th, 2009
So today it was just me and my shaky design skills. I avoided all the usual distractions: email, phone, Mongol hordes at the door. I had to break the spell of the blank canvas syndrome, which had so crippled me over the last few days.
I received a fax from my client Ignacious Spore. I’m not sure how, because I don’t have a fax machine. It read ‘Are you up yet?’ There was no escape.
I began to study the worst logo in the world - a simple monogram of the letters ‘IS’ in a relative of Helvetica. Spore had limited imagination. The bold forms of the letters twisted and turned in my mind, and seconds evolved into minutes which became hours.
Eventually I could only see the monogram as a word. The word ‘is’. In the intensity of my concentration the word began to take on a mystical form. It was zen-like in its beauty and simplicity. Maybe this was the religious symbology that Spore was referring to.
Maybe in fact it wasn’t the worst logo in the world. Maybe it was brilliant. Maybe it was like the ‘fcuk’ logo - it was so appalling it had to be genius.
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February 15th, 2009
I hate starting a new project. I’ll do anything to avoid it. If there’s a ball of string that needs untangled I’ll do that first. I reckon with all the time I’ve spent procrastinating, I could easily have taught myself violin to a level worthy of Menuhin.
Here’s the pattern. Client comes to me with some simple design chore. I tell them it’s unfeasibly difficult, will take a month and cost the earth. But I assure them it’ll be taken care of and they go away happy because now it’s some other sucker’s problem.
Then I spend three weeks staring into space, tormenting the cats and generally avoiding the issue. Client may ask to ‘see something’ during this period but can always be fobbed off with some nonsense or other. Finally, after a great deal of unease, I’ll kick the turkey into shape, wrap it up in three days and get it out the door before anybody gets twitchy.
It’s not that I’m lazy. Far from it. I have a psychological condition - a near pathological aversion to the gaping void that stretches before me on each new task. They call it blank canvas syndrome. Until it’s filled with something - anything - I’d rather waste my life doing something even more pointless.
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February 13th, 2009
You may be wondering what all this has to do with graphic design. Well so am I. But what does anything have to do with anything nowadays? I mean, I bought the Da Vinci Code thinking it had something to do with literature, and where did that get me? I’ll tell you - page five.
The fact is it was graphic design that got us into this mess. My client Spore had asked me to analyse the worst logo in the world for its religious symbology, and rather than shatter his belief that I studied the subject at Harvard, I accepted the commission. It had been a lean month.
Having taken the problem first to possible genius the Admiral, who pondered it at length before getting sidetracked trying to split the internet, and then to Fifi LaFlamme, whose sherry-like substances left me giddy but no further forward, it seemed I had exhausted all the routes open to me.
There was only one thing left and it was a nightmare scenario. I was going to have to actually do some work.
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