Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:22:17 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>,
   WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Funny Money
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

At 9/19/2006 12:58 PM, Michael Nelson wrote:

>We have shiny new presses that use the dry offset printing
>process to print shiny new currency.  As we learn how to
>use all the bells & whistles of these new presses, we are
>designing more colorful (and hopefully more secure) currency.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should...

>But, looking at the new $5 and $100 designs, I think they
>forgot to include a graphic artist on the design committee.
>Images, security features, text, etc. just crammed wherever
>they could find room.

Same thing happened on the web and in e-mail.  Once the capability for
colors, flashing things, different fonts and text sizes was available,
every aesthetically-impaired nitwit on the planet just had to use
them...and thus was born the web site www.webpagesthatsuck.com (it's a web
design site these days, rather than a place to humiliate those who
shouldn't be allowed near a web editor as it was when it started), and a
general aversion to HTML in e-mail (not the only reason to object to its
use, but one of them).

Word processors rather than text editors had a similar effect...and account
for much of the loss of efficiency that using computers was supposed to
provide in offices.  In the old days you had two font choices (pica and
elite) for your type writer and you had to decide when you bought it
(unless you could afford a "flying ball Selectric"), so people spent time
on the wording of their missives.  Then word processors came along and so
much time was spent picking fonts, colors, layouts, paragraph styles, logo
graphics, and other such unnecessary trivia that there wasn't any time left
to worry about content, and sending out a memo started taking longer than
if it had been done with a feathered quill...

I have to go now...my geeze-alarm is going off...

-- Mike B.
--
There's a certain lack of flexibility involved in conformity...