‘The problem with you, Tony, is that you judge everybody else by your high standards…and that’s not a criticism!’
This snippet of feedback was in response to a piece of work that had been completed for me and I’d forwarded on asking for thoughts as I felt it wasn’t right, but was keen for a sense-check before asking for corrections.
It wasn’t an obvious error. There were no misspelt words, none of the statistics in the piece were blatantly made up, nor were there any glaringly obvious grammatical mistakes anywhere.
No. This one was graphical. Surely it was blindingly obvious to anybody that the small logo in the bottom corner had been squashed slightly so the whole thing just looked…wrong?!
If I’m being totally honest it wasn’t a surprise reading the comment, I’ve heard ‘does it matter?’ from colleagues many a time throughout my career as I push pixels looking for perfection – apparently pointlessly to them.
What did surprise me, however, is that I paused and thought ‘maybe he’s right…?’.
‘Maybe people don’t care about the squashed logo…the fact that a tiny amend to the leading would fix that headline…the alignment of those text boxes is off ever so slightly…that orphan left trailing at the end of that paragraph could be fixed with just a bit of creative kerning?’
‘Maybe it…doesn’t matter?!’
In a world where time is money and multitasking is mandatory, maybe it’s the minutiae that has taken the hit?
Is this a problem? Have you found yourself letting things go that you perhaps wouldn’t have done in the past? Should I perhaps try to shift myself away from the mind-set that if a job is worth doing it is worth doing properly?
There is an epilogue to this post, and it comes courtesy of a recent journey home on the Tube. There was nothing particularly unusual about it, the same silence as always across the carriage as commuters attempt to avoid eye contact.
This time, however, I chuckle as I spot that there’s a number of them looking through shattered smartphone screens and listening to music through headphones that have obvious knots in the cord…
‘…maybe it doesn’t matter?!’