That was the aim when 26 member Mike Reed took the helm of design blog Noisy Decent Graphics for a week in December. There’s no doubt that the gap between writers and graphic designers remains much more of a gulf than exists in advertising, and the invitation to write ‘for the other side’ was a terrific opportunity to get the two sides talking.
As you may remember from last month’s newsletter, Mike asked designers and writers to email him with the things they liked and loathed most about working with the other side. There was a pretty enthusiastic response, and it was genuinely exciting to see how much many designers really do care about the written word.
However, Mike says, ’Not many writers took the chance to pitch in, which seems surprising when so many of us grumble about how our design partners don’t understand us. I had emails from five writers in total. Maybe everyone’s much happier about the status quo than I thought.’
Still, the debate was pretty lively, as you can read in the NDG archives. There were even mysterious contributions from a Richard Madeley imposter, which added an unexpected bizarre twist to the week.
If you’re wishing you’d spoken up, why not add your voice to the comments sections? There’s no reason the debate should end here.