A picture is worth a thousand words. And sometimes, a picture version of words is worth a thousand words in a non-system-standard font. Read the full story about this cake over at Cake Wrecks; the short version is that the poor font on here was supposed to be Thai, but the baker’s computer didn’t have the appropriate font, and for some reason the baker didn’t know any better.

I have empathy for the guy who designed the cake. I’ve had font errors before, especially when working with free fonts. Fortunately thus far, none have gone to print (though I did send a PDF to a prof once with only half the fonts embedded; at least I caught that problem quickly).

Professional editors and designers, of course, know the solution to this (stick with standard fonts, create outlines of special fonts, package the fonts with the document when you send it to print, have a good editorial process in place to catch problems, etc.). But if you’re not a designer–if you’re not trained to think about these things–what do you do?

Simple: Don’t. Be. Lazy. Remember grade school, where they taught you to check your work? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Had the person who ordered this cake, for example, chosen to deliver the printout in person instead of through e-mail, he would have saved himself some pain off the bat.

There’s a similar rule for the decorator, of course: If it looks like a mistake, it probably is. We’re all sound and fury here; we are quick to notice others’ mistakes, and probably quick to rip them a new one to the rest of the world, but we’re not so willing to actually call them out and ask, “Hey, was this supposed to be like this?” Maybe as an editor I’m a unique case in this, but I know that not only do I make mistakes, I’m also bad at catching my own. But I can’t improve if I’m not aware there’s a problem.

I remember sitting at the lunch table one day in middle school with my friends. One of them had a rather large booger in her nose for a good 15 minutes before she finally discovered it. And here’s the thing–all of us, and there were six or seven of us at the table–noticed it. And we said nothing. And when she finally noticed it and one of us mentioned that it had been there for a while, she got (rightly) mad at us for not pointing it out sooner. Because really, yes, it would have been embarrassing to her to have it pointed out, but I firmly believe that it was more embarrassing that it wasn’t.

In short: everything in life needs editing. The best editors in the world still need someone to edit them. So no matter who you are, if you see something that you know can be fixed, say something while it’s still fixable. You may step on a few toes, sure, but more often than not the person will be grateful for the advice.

design, editing, fonts editing, linkedin, Typography

In a fit of uncharacteristic motivation, I spent Friday evening redesigning my website (see also: the aforementioned afoot changes, only 3.5 months late). I’m nowhere near done, of course, but it’s already better than what I had before.

Ah, what I had before. Ah, the old WasabiJane.

This is, I think, the fourth incarnation of WasabiJane. First there was the waste of a year of a paid domain name from a won bet, then there was blogger. The last incarnation was born in December 2007, when I was still trying to figure out how to systematically break things in WordPress and needed to create a portfolio site. In retrospect, I’m amazed I actually did as much as I did with it; admittedly, I didn’t update the portfolio at all (a function of a poor choice of a template), but up until about a year ago I actually blogged multiple times per month.

I could hazard a guess as to why I stopped. Life has shifted multiple times since I graduated in December 2008. In April, my boss at University Outreach and Engagement told me he couldn’t afford to renew my temp contract, and I’d be out of a job come October. In August, I started transitioning from there to doing contract work at MessageMakers (an awesome production company in Old Town, Lansing). September was consumed by a workation to Northern Wisconsin, a struggle to balance a workload for both MessageMakers and UOE, and a physical move from an apartment into the basement of some friends from church. (September was awful. I don’t recommend trying to balance that much at once without major league support.) For the next six months, life was in…well, I’d call it a holding pattern, but I’ve already seen some good growth as a direct result of it.

In short, the last 18 months or so have been like fertilizer: lots of crap, but necessary for growth.

So where am I now, and why am I actually writing here again? In April, I started a full-time position at Covenant Eyes (official title: Web Content Producer, and yes, I am working on redesigning the site). Of indirect benefit to the blog is the fact that I actually feel stable about life for the first time in a long time. I have a salaried position. I have awesome coworkers. As of two weeks ago, I have my own apartment again. I have negative space again.

The second thing that changed is that I’m back around bloggers. I mean, my desk is right next to the company blogger’s. I proofread at least five blog posts and edit one podcast a week (by the way, this week’s is particularly awesome). And at least a few coworkers have personal blogs. I’m too lazy to look any actual research up at the moment, but there’s sufficient evidence that you rise to (or sink to) the level of your peers. Now that I’m in a place where people blog, I’ll be more likely to think about blogging myself.

Hence the rebirth of WasabiJane. Expect more of what I’ve historically written, only posted more than once every four months. Oh, and probably containing 20% more rants about the porn industry.

design, site design, internet