I’m a perfectionist. And a proofreader. Every day, when I’m out and about, I find typos and errors, grammar problems, and just downright sloppiness everywhere. For example, at Kaiser when I go for a doctor appointment, I’m confronted by very clever signage encouraging healthy habits — but loaded with typos. I despair for my profession, for it seems that designers these days don’t proof their work… or if they do, they just don’t have the grammar skills needed.
Perhaps my eyes are too quick. Just as I discovered that VISA cards have a typo in their microprinting (look closely around the VISA logo, you’ll see the word repeated over and over, and one says VSIA — deliberately, to catch counterfeiters).
And just this morning, I caught the same thing on a major television network. Check out the “microprinting” on this morning’s promo for NBC Nightly News:
I don’t know. I expect that when a designer is creating graphics that will be broadcast to millions of people, they’d be carefully proofed.
Or do companies just hire indiscriminately, without regard to quality of the work, instead focusing on the bottom line?
I can’t remember where it is, but there’s a type-o in the Declaration of Independence. Well, I suppose that’s not a type-o, but more of a script-o.