There’s nothing quite like driving along a stretch of newly paved highway.
This is what your car is meant to sound like! The engine is purring along, the warm tires stick to the road, and you and your passengers enjoy a smooth journey.
Now, this may not be a surprise to you, especially if you like in a country like Canada that regularly gets it’s roads attacked by ravenous temperature changes, but not all roads are like that.
Potholes and other anomalies in the road surface can make your automotive journey less than perfect. You are watching the traffic, maybe enjoying the sunshine, singing along to the radio even, when suddenly and violently, your car jolts. Plunges. Just about makes you eat your tonsils!
What was that? How’s my car? Do I need an alignment now? Are my tires OK? How am I going to fix the hole in the ceiling? Why doesn’t someone fix that [bleep]ing canyon in the road?
Nobody likes having an otherwise enjoyable and meaningful experience interrupted by a potentially hazardous and disruptive oversight. Some potholes can be avoided by better road construction, but most can be fixed sooner or later (preferably sooner…).
You don’t have to look far – magazine, TV, the web – to find examples of design potholes. Spelling, grammar, colour palettes, image choice and overall layout can help or hinder the viewer. An otherwise perfect design can get kiboshed by one error, one omission, one poor decision. And when that happens, it doesn’t matter what the message is, or was. The viewer is too distracted by the faux pas to see anything else.
Good design is meant to be a conduit for the content and ideally wouldn’t be noticed unless it’s bad. Just like a pothole. Few people drive through the mountains commenting on the road surface and forgetting the beautiful scenery. Of course, some of us go out of our way to look at design, but at the end of the day it’s all about the content.
“Road? What road? Oooo.. what a beautiful sunset!”