Monte

When I was a sophomore in college, I took Introduction to Advertising Design as required by my major, Communication Technology (just a fancy term for Web development). During the first week of class, the instructor took a poll to find out what the students in the class were majoring in. Out of approximately 25 students, only four including myself were studying Web development. The other students were all in either journalism or public relations.

I thought this was strange. Why would journalism and public relations majors be required to take a design class?

Today, I learned why.

If a company has no advertising or design staff, the design decisions are made by the communications department.

My company is currently redesigning a website for a city in East Texas, and today I spoke with the city’s communications advisor who wanted to make an ass-load of changes to my original design. Actually, I take that back. The original design had already been picked apart by the former communications advisor. This new twat was only tearing apart the little that remains of the original. So for 30 minutes, Suze, who sounded to be about 12-years-old, which ticked me off even more, went on and on about how the blues should be bluer and the reds redder and the navigation should be replaced with “graphical” buttons and so on. Suze loves to use the word “graphical.”

By no means am I a great designer; however, I do have a pretty good idea of what looks good and what doesn’t, and it’s frustrating to have to constantly take design advise from communications majors, the same idiots who I sat beside in Introduction to Advertising Design for an entire semester, the same idiots who didn’t know Helvetica from Arial.

My mood worsened when I got an e-mail at the end of the day from a client who requested I come in and meet with the president of the company. Great. Design advice from a president, now.