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Is there any excuse for lazy copy?

I’m a graphic designer which means I care more about how something looks than the words that accompany it. NO! If I ever say that, I’ll have to fire myself.

I firmly believe that it is the designer’s job to make sure both text and image work harmoniously. You can’t do that if you’re ignoring the text. Too often I see otherwise excellent design work spoiled by shoddy copy. I’m talking about spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, bad typography or just plain nonsense. Consider the following example (taken from a well known crisp packet) that was recently highlighted by Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert.

copy-crisps

Now I’m sure ‘Made with real ingredients’ probably came fully formed from the marketing department, keen to point out that no imaginary potatoes were used in the production process. But in the face of statements like this, I either get depressed or slightly militant. I prefer to speak up. If the client has supplied all the copy, read it and make sure it makes sense. That’s part of your job. The client is paying for a professional service so that’s what they deserve. If you point out something and they ignore it, at least you’ve tried. I know it’s not always easy, but don’t you just love a challenge?

Here’s another one…

copy-dvd

‘Full length DVD player’ – as opposed to what? Those kind that only play half a film? At least this model includes black colour. My last DVD player didn’t include black colour.

Pete Clark
Cogdon, Clark & Tranter

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 10:00 am and is filed under Graphic Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Is there any excuse for lazy copy?”

  1. Jamie Hudson says:
    3 November 2010 at 4:49 pm

    Couldn’t agree more Pete. And it’s nice to meet a designer who cares about the copy, and doesn’t just see it as a necessary evil to fill some space.

    Here’s a blog I wrote recently which talked about poor design and copy. See if you can guess the comoany behind the terrible piece of DM featured:

    http://blog.jamiehudson.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

    Jamie

  2. Peter Clark says:
    24 November 2010 at 6:14 pm

    Hi Jamie, that DM is staggeringly bad. I don’t really know what to say other than, hold on to the fact that there some designers (and obviously copywriters) out there who don’t think it’s ok for their work to be pants. Even if those pants are super.

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