Absence of Ugliness continued

And so we completely redid the segment. From the Rick Altman School of Design, we spun the Rick Altman School of Ugliness Avoidance. Instead of discussing how to effectively mix multiple typefaces or how to blend six inks or how to create tension between elements, we addressed more, well, more pedestrian issues. For instance:

• White space. In many cases, the best thing a DRAW user can do with 93 square inches of paper is not put stuff on it. Critical elements don't get the attention they deserve if they have to compete with lots of other elements. Amateurs should look at their work and force themselves to define all elements as "important" or "noise." The objective, of course, would be to eliminate the noise.
   
• Bold. During the production, we showed a piece of art which prompted the host to remark, "Now that is UGG-ly." There was a ton of noise, granted, but what also struck the host was that all of the text was set in boldface. That forced the well-intended but misguided perpetrator of the piece to resort to ALL CAPS, underlining, and multiple exclamation marks!!! in order to bring emphasis to the doomed flier. When you make everything bold, you lose all hope of making anything bold. Amateur artists should pay attention to the simple concept of contrast. An element is only emphatic to the extent that it stands out over the elements around it. If you want to raise your voice above a whisper, you don't need to shout, and so it goes for your text-based projects, as well.
   
• Makeovers...NOT! After showing the UGG-ly flier, the host and I both expressed an almost overwhelming temptation to make it over into something beautiful. I urged us to resist that temptation, and questioned the wisdom of users such as us even trying for a makeover. "Instead," I argued, "you should perform a teardown. That is where you take an ugly product, remove the ugliness--tear it down--but then don't try to build it back up again." The teardown is the most important step an amateur can take toward absence of ugliness.

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