B Y T O M T O R T O R I C I
I was a little surprised by the assignment, but of course I’d give it a go.
Long before I became a website writer, I was starting out on Long Island, NY as a print graphic designer. But instead of the usual brochure or ad, the agency I was freelancing for called me in that day to work on something a little different.
They gave me a simple line drawing of the side of a bus, and asked me to come up with some designs for bus graphics. The fact that I was available for the assignment seemed to eclipse my utter lack of experience in vehicle graphics. In any case, I was young, and glad for any opportunity.
The client, they said, wanted to see multiple design options. When they repeated that requirement for the third time, I jotted it down in my notes.
With a handful of photocopies of the bus outline, and my colorful set of artist’s markers, I began knocking out as many bus design variations as I could come up with. Eager to please, I hoped the agency would be impressed with the thick stack of graphic possibilities I turned in.
A week or so later, I arrived for another meeting, and was shown the option the client had chosen to use on their buses.
But instead of feeling proud of this professional success, I was suddenly deflated, on the edge of being sick. Why? The chosen design really wasn’t very good. Not horrible, but with nothing fresh, modern or distinctive about it. I suddenly realized that my focus had been on quantity, not quality. And the client, clearly having no real design sensibility, reliably picked one of the worst options in the stack. Now the decision was made, and my face burned with silent inner humiliation.
But, as it turned out, that wasn’t the worst of it.
The bus designs, I soon found out, weren’t for some private bus charter company. No. They were for all the public transit buses that ran all day, every day, up and down the busy roads and avenues of Long Island, for all to see.
From then on, every time I passed one of those new buses, or it passed me, I was reminded of my stupid novice mistake — and the key lesson from it that I had since embedded into my emerging professional value system.
The lesson was this: Never submit any work, any option, or any variation that I couldn’t live with, or wouldn’t be proud of.
Of all the different types of work I’ve done and presented in the decades since, I’ve never once broke this vow. In the rare instances where I’ve been tempted to rush something out under an impending deadline, I stop, I think of those ugly buses rolling by … and I get back to work.
And although those vehicles, and their graphics, have been replaced over the years, my belated apologies to the good people of Long Island.
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About the Author: Tom Tortorici is an Atlanta copywriter and web content writer who helps companies make a genuine connection with their audience. His classes and conference presentations have focused on how writing, strategy and design can work together to grab attention and interest even among readers with short attention spans. In addition to working directly with businesses, Tom regularly partners with web designers and marketing agencies.
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Tom Tortorici Inc. | Tom@TomTortorici.com | 770-934-7861 | 3101 Rockaway Rd | Atlanta GA 30341