The “Good Enough” Revolution
Here is a New York Times blog posting that a friend of mine sent me. We were having a conversation about "quality of work" nowadays and how in the past couple decades the technology has gotten better, but the actual finished product in many cases leaves something to be desired. Seems that even our clients are OK with this. Hard for a couple of guys who built their careers on producing high quality work to swallow. My friend is a video producer and of course with me I see it in the printed pieces I work on.
Years ago, I could never image "resing-up" as many images as I do these days. Speed on turnaround times has forced many of our printers to go the digital route and I have admittedly OKed PDF proofs sent via email with mixed results in this scenario. This could encompass any type of industry you can imagine. Well, it's at least refreshing to know that others on the same page are taking notice of this phenomenon too. Just knowing that helps me restore a little faith in the human race, but not much.
Come to think of it, the clients these days may not even know what good quality is. Read the article below:
Good Enough is the New Great
"Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere," Robert Capps of Wired magazine wrote this summer in an essay called "The Good-Enough Revolution." Companies that had focused mainly on improving the technical quality of their products have started to notice that, for many consumers, "ease of use, continuous availability and low price" are more important.
High-definition televisions have turned every living room into a home cinema, yet millions of us choose to watch small, blurry videos on our computers and our mobile devices. Cameras capture images in a dozen megapixels, yet Flickr is filled with snapshots taken with phone cameras that we can neither focus nor zoom. And at war, a country that has a fleet of F-16 fighter jets that can cover 1,500 miles an hour is now using more and more remote-controlled Predator drones that are powered by snowmobile engines.
Long time no write
I thought that title might be blog slang for "long time no see", but then again, if it was a true blog acronym it would be LTNW. See, the holidays came up and I got lazy about posting new blogs. And by holidays, I mean starting with Halloween. My intention was to blog twice a week and I did great coming outta the gate, but now I'm starting to think that I'm not really a big blogger.
When my wife started this blog for me I think the intent was for me to put my ridiculous rants out there as a way to vent. But as I looked at a couple of the NAPP guys blog's recently, I kinda thought I might be doing myself a dis-service. I mean, it might be funny and all, but is it PRODUCTIVE? Probably not. Then again, it is my life and my reality. Maybe one or two people can relate, or get a laugh from it. If you saw how long it takes me to write one of these things you would get a laugh, besides being a poor typer to boot. I guess this would be a good time to iterate that there may be the need to keep this anonymous for some of the reasons stated above.
Since my last post way back when, I wanted to put this real cool technical Photoshop trick I saw at the NAPP conference on here. I thought that would give my blog some good balance. Well, truth be told, I get so busy at work, the last thing I really want to do is get back on the computer and write about work when I'm not at work. Wow, what an epiphany, right? Besides that, I have to keep up occasionally with Myspace and Facebook accounts that have lost their zeal. Did I mention Linked-in? Thank God I don't have a Twitter account (not that anyone would follow a washed-up, middle aged, punk singer - did I write that?). I don't know how people do it.
Still, fret not, I will continue to try to blog, but will probably – no, not probably – WILL not blog as often as would keep you interested in coming back on a daily, or dare I say, weekly basis. I did feel bad about this at first, but then I visited this one talented retoucher's blog and he was only bloggin like once a month. He did have a lot of info in that one blog tho, and very good info at that. Don't expect that here, but I will try to be on it more often, and hopefully can, from time to time, supply some good tips or maybe just at least give you a chuckle.
Tap, tap, "Hey, is this thing on?"