noises from dog n’ moon.

I was watching a televised concert the other day where, between songs, they were mixing in still photos of the artist with large, bold, white letters on a black screen that read off her accolades. The last of which was “COUNRTY STAR”. My first thought was to hit rewind (thank you, Tivo) and doublecheck that I wasn’t suffering from Adult Onset Dyslexia. Sure as anything, my eyes hadn’t deceived me. My second thought was that heads were gonna roll. Certainly, someone had to lose a job over that, right?

The lesson and the rule? Proofread. Business is hard enough even when all the pistons are firing. Why make it more difficult on yourself by allowing your marketing to be tainted by elementary grammatical and/or spelling errors? Here’s a tip I learned from a seasoned designer: read your copy backwards so that you’re not lulled by the flow of a piece you’ve written. This allows you to check for spelling mistakes one word at a time. When it’s time to check for grammatical errors, read it twice- once very slowly and the next aloud. Then have a trusted cohort look it over as well. This may seem tedious, but it’s nothing compared to the time it’ll take to do damage control when you’ve offered professional Hosing Services, instead of Web Hosting.

Yikes.

I know it seems either too simple or too complex. But being deliberate seems to be the theme of the week for us at dog n’ moon.

There is a no man’s land in design. A place so wrought with mediocrity that it pulls at the soul and burdens the joy out of the experience of art. That no man’s land is The Random Disassociated Graphic Design Project. And, yes, the words “graphic design” are said with the same tone you’d use when telling the waiter there was a hair in your burrito. Why? Because Graphic Design is a link, not a fence or a chain. Graphic Design is a brick, not a house or a castle. Graphic Design is the new shameful replacement for “Desktop Publishing”. And the reason that “graphic design” should be added to the American Lexicon of Profanity is because it’s short-sighted and untethered to the messages that matter. People come to designers because designers speak a language that is easy on the eyes and soothing to the ears. We’re “simple words and pretty pictures” people. And when you have a message, a product, a service that the world needs to know about, you call a designer because he or she sings the message like a nightingale. But did you know that a nightingales sing at night to attract a mate, at dawn to defend territory, and at louder volumes in urban areas to compete with the noise? So nightingales sing with purpose. With deliberation.

As a designer, I’ve found that it’s important to consider each job as part of a larger launch. Even if only part of the launch is being produced right now, it’s constructive to think in terms of the big picture, so that all the pieces are seen in relation to the whole. This is not an upsell or a plan to push you past your budget limitations. It’s a call to see your message as more than just whistling to get people to look at you (or your product) for a second. It’s a call to push you into approaching your footsteps, your projects, and your marketing as a launch, and not just a to-do item.