Refined Wisdom: Sometimes editors get bad design because they keep asking for something different, something “creative.” One designer told me, the editors bring it on themselves and should share the blame. But the fact remains, editors are too often intimidated by designers.
It must be a decade ago, and I don’t know where, but I was addressing a large group of writers and editors. Somewhere in the middle of my address, I said: “We editors must get control of our publications again.”
There was a roar from the crowd as if a winning, last-second touchdown had been scored. My, how they wanted to hear that.
No, I was not talking about getting more control from the publisher or corporation. No, I wasn’t talking about escaping pressure from advertising. I was talking about regaining control away from designers who use design for the sake of design, who obscure text by reversing it or printing red over black, and who do little if anything to enhance the message of the text.
I know that I should be talking about writing, but what is the point of writing if people insist on making the text illegible? There are really only two reasons to kill trees for print – legibility and portability. Most people still prefer reading words on paper over words on the screen. I’ve read that one can read print on paper 25 percent faster than words on the screen. And it’s certainly easier to carry paper around than a laptop.
Regardless of how many studies show that readers turn away from reversed type, many publications I see have pages and pages of it. Why? Black on white is easy to read, and so is black on yellow. But why put dark colors behind print? Or worse, why put images behind print?
When I get mean, I say that I once met a designer who could read. And – that I once met a designer who actually did read the copy. I once said that to a group of writers, editors and designers at the Meredith Corporation, and after I finished, the head of design there came up to me and said, “Here at Meredith, we insist that designers read the copy.” Well!
Perhaps the problem is the words “design” and “designer.” Jan White, the best there is in graphic presentation, told me that once a young woman came up to him and said, “Mr. White, I, too, am a designer.” “That’s OK,” Jan told her, “Some day you will grow up to be a journalist.”
I do not do design, nor do I do design workshops. But I know this: Whenever a design calls attention to itself rather than to the message of the text, it is bad design. A photography professor at Missouri said it nicely some years ago: “Suppose you had a lovely painting in your home. A guest looks and it and says, ‘Oh, what a nice frame.’” Would you be pleased?
I prefer the word “presentation.” Everyone — writers, editors, photographers and designers — (I confess, I don’t know what other word to use here), must be concerned with the presentation of the ideas. And by far the best time to begin doing that is before the article is written. If designers and photographers are brought into the editorial process from the beginning, there is much less change for bizarre and disintegrated pages.
I wish I could count the times that editors have told me that they try to tame the designers, but the designers tell them editors know nothing about design, and they should tend to what they know. Besides, designers win prizes – awarded to them by other designers. I think we should stop awarding prizes for design and instead award them for presentation.
Well, it doesn’t take a genius to look at a page to see whether all of the type is easily legible. It doesn’t take years of training to see when artwork on the page has nothing to do with the text except to distract the reader.
Sometimes editors get bad design because they keep asking for something different, something “creative.” One designer told me, the editors bring it on themselves and should share the blame. But the fact remains, editors are too often intimidated by designers.
Isn’t it time editors got control of their publications again?
(Everyone should read “Editing By Design,” by Jan V. White, New York: Allworth Press, 2003.)
