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May 19th 2010

Jon Hallowell

Jon is Group Creative Director at Marketecture. One of the most awarded Creatives in b2b. Over the last five years, Jon has won around 50 National and International creative awards. Including two CIPR Grand Prix, four Roses and quite a few UK B2B Marketing Awards. Which is nice!

If I had a penny for every time I have heard a graduate or junior say to me, 'but you don't understand, you need to be more organic' or 'the lens flare really adds another dimension to the visual' I'd be a very rich man. What do they mean by 'organic' or 'another dimension'? I'll let you into a little secret, they don't have a clue what they mean, to them is a self vindicating, albeit unknown, admission that they don't understand the fundamentals of layout and design and are trying to cover that up with either random type on its arse executions or the arbitrary inclusion of a photoshop filter.

As with everything in this world, if you don't understand the basics, how can you ever hope to expand on them and create greatness. Simply put, the advent of computers and ever more advanced software is making design more accessible to the masses, which is a good thing, the problem is that hard and software do not fill the knowledge gap of experience. And a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. A little more time studying the history and theory of design definetely wouldn't go amiss. How many graduates this century can truly say they have set type with actual leading or cut films and know what trapping and on press colour balancing involves or for that matter that orange is not the future its actually the hardest of all colours to reproduce in CMYK?

So I guess my point is, as the more experienced we become it is our duty to pay it forward and make sure that the up and coming talent doesn't lose touch with the heritage of our industry simply because the shortcut 'apple','design me a layout' is the latest feature in InDesign.