The Blandest Acceptable Compromise
Although I don’t much care to, I can clearly remember when it was my man’s duty to paint the ceilings of the old flats we frequently moved to. I would be on top of a wobbly ladder, peering upwards with paint-speckled glasses, not to mention my hair, still abundant at the time. And at the bottom of the ladder the lady of my life would point her finger and tell me You’ve missed a bit, darling, and you’ve also forgotten that corner over there.” I have these déjà vu experiences whenever clients ask me whether I’ve thought about maybe trying a more muted dark blue instead of the proposed bottle green. When I tell them that their color is always a popular choice, not all of them detect a hint of irony.
When it comes to colors all clients always want to pitch in, because they don’t so much as suspect that it could entail more knowledge than one would require to choose a tie. However, were appropriate tie choice acceptable as proof of men’s good color sense, one would wish to go back to the black and white world of the 1960s. At least back then I was spared from having to discuss matters of typographic detail. Nowadays everyone has hundreds of fonts on their PCs and regards the mere opening of the menu as the main action when selecting a typeface. Advice for using these easily available but boring standard typefaces is usually given by writers from the so-called specialist magazines whose columns, written by dropout language students and frustrated electrical engineers, explain the rules of design to Corel Draw users. They know that security means hiding among the crowd. The astonishing prevalence of an un-typeface like Arial is largely due to its astonishing prevalence.
The bigger a group gets, the lower its intellectual common denominator falls. The average taste of a group is definitely worse than that of any in-dividual member. One can even see this at board presentations, where the propensity to make decisions is reciprocal to the group size.
The bigger a group gets, the lower its intellectual common denominator falls. The average taste of a group is definitely worse than that of any in-dividual member. One can even see this at board presentations, where the propensity to make decisions is reciprocal to the group size.
A personal career plan may also play a major role in forming averagely bad taste. The further ahead people plan, the more likely they are to arrive at the BAC, the Blandest Acceptable Compromise. If a group discussion had a color it definitely would be beige.
However, should one choose to make it easier for an indecisive committee by showing a deliberately poor design for them to discard, one has to be prepared for that very proposal being selected for a thorough redesign. And whoever makes the mistake of presenting more than two totally different designs mustn’t be surprised when he’s asked to produce an additional half dozen alternative versions. There is no upper limit to the changes that can be made. You know for sure when you hear the words “Have you tried it in blue?” that the battle has been lost. I won’t do it anymore.
That’s why the penultimate motto in our manifesto for clients says: “Trust us. You hired us because we can do something you cannot do.” If that isn’t made clear nothing good will come of it.
However, should one choose to make it easier for an indecisive committee by showing a deliberately poor design for them to discard, one has to be prepared for that very proposal being selected for a thorough redesign. And whoever makes the mistake of presenting more than two totally different designs mustn’t be surprised when he’s asked to produce an additional half dozen alternative versions. There is no upper limit to the changes that can be made. You know for sure when you hear the words “Have you tried it in blue?” that the battle has been lost. I won’t do it anymore.
That’s why the penultimate motto in our manifesto for clients says: “Trust us. You hired us because we can do something you cannot do.” If that isn’t made clear nothing good will come of it.
Text: Erik Spiekermann
Illustration: Alina Günter
Illustration: Alina Günter
Erik Spiekermann is a type designer. 1979 he co-founded MetaDesign. Today he is partner of EdenSpiekermann, Berlin/Amsterdam.
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