I was reading the new David Sedaris book, and thoroughly enjoying it, until I came to a chapter that employed subheads and sub-subheads. And the designer didn’t do them right, to my way of thinking: they should have been sized differently, perhaps set in a different typeface, with a bit more room between the subhead and the text. And every time I encountered one of the book’s subheads, I became more and more irritated.
A friend who studied filmmaking said his studies all but ruined his enjoyment of going to the movies. Unless a movie was extremely well-crafted, he kept seeing technical flaws, and it kept him from just watching the story.
Now I can’t read a newspaper article without editing it (most mornings, I find myself screaming at Florida Today, “Does no one proofread anymore? Can no one write a cogent paragraph?”), can’t read a magazine article without thinking about layout and font use, can’t watch a movie trailer without saying, “Copperplate Gothic Bold, again? Really? Don’t you people own any other typefaces?”, and can’t read a book without sighing, “What a shame, I’d have designed this so much better!”
In short, graphic design has made me a miserable human being.
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