Venting toxic brain gas

[Solwyn]

My brain is full of rage.

So I was gonna say this on some form of social media for the purpose of venting, like most people of ... well not my generation but the one after it.  But then I remembered a lot of people from work are following my various social media methods, so instead I'll put it here.

::begin venting::

So they hired me to be a web developer and also do design. That's always a tricky mix, because they assume you're better at one than the other. And as we all know, a small portion of the world can understand complex design patterns, but everyone thinks they're a designer.

So, I had this design that was very carefully created using the most usable and conscientious readability patterns that still conformed to their branding and colors. Everything was going great, been working for months without any complaints, and all of a sudden I start getting e-mails from someone who is halfway up the chain of command, telling me to change the white/grey gradient logo (which is on a sepia-toned background and has a subtle drop-shadow) to a burnt red color.

For those of you who aren't color blind, that's incredibly hard to see. So I explain this, and give all of my most diplomatic terms. "According to design theory, blah blah" and "I'll be glad to make the change for you, but my fear is that readability will be affected," blah blah. Her response?

"I know all that design stuff. I'm doing this because my boss told me to tell you. This is what they want"

I've never heard this from her boss, who has been talking to me off and on since the project started.  I thought nothing of it and made the change. Then I get another e-mail and she slips up and says "I hate that it's white, that looks bad."

Right. Your boss told you this.

The worst part? Her official job is doing print design for the company, and she makes professional catalogs for million-dollar events look like e-vites to a children's birthday party.

::end venting::

How is everyone else doing?

[BlueCross]

Cool story, bro...

[Solwyn]

Cool story, bro...

Actually since this thread is pointless and I'm already over it, I'm going to self-hijack.

You know someone who pretends to be ignorant of something in order to piss off other people? Not just your typical troll, but the entire mindset of people who say and do things sounding stupid in order to make people attack them and therefore seem stupid?

I'm kind of fascinated by how many people pick up on it, even though it's kind of hard to tell someone intentionally made a shirt that says "Your Retarded." And yet average people look at modern art and think it's just something their kid could have done.

What's up with that, Internet and World?

[BlueCross]

I'm having a bit of a problem parsing that last bit.  And no, I'm not trying to be stupid or ignorant.

But I did like your original post; that lady definitely sounds like someone I would not like to know.

[BlueCross]

P.S.

I just found out that you can get Playboy in braille.

I wanna say 'how cool is that!' but that does seem a bit politically incorrect.

[Chucara]

Ahh yes.. The classic story of anyone who works in design.

See this is why I'm a programmer. People don't meddle in code, and you can always use one of the following lines to get your way:

- That's is not possible with the controls we are using
- I can change it, but it would take me two more weeks
- The flux capacitor in the Holyfield membrane would cause the program to force an abnormal response pattern, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

[Hoopy Frood]

Ahh yes.. The classic story of anyone who works in design.

See this is why I'm a programmer. People don't meddle in code, and you can always use one of the following lines to get your way:

- That's is not possible with the controls we are using
- I can change it, but it would take me two more weeks
- The flux capacitor in the Holyfield membrane would cause the program to force an abnormal response pattern, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

Doens't always work, at least not for us Windows programmers.

See, any good GUI should be easy to use and appear relatively seamless to the user. The user shouldn't have to think about what's going on behind the scenes, that's the programmer's job.

Of course, when you work for an organization that concentrates on programming embedded systems which run countermeasures for military equipment, any application that involves a GUI could just as well be alien tech to most people whether they work for your org, the org your company is contracted to, or the end customer itself.

So they need a new feature which will impact many other features behind the scenes in this GUI application. Then they tell you it should only take you a day, when realistically even being as good as you are at your job and you might be able to do it in a week, they should reasonably be expecting it to take at least two if they had a clue on how GUI fronted applications typically work.

(Which is connected to one of the reasons why I took the voluntary Reduction In Force.)

[Solwyn]

Ahh yes.. The classic story of anyone who works in design.

See this is why I'm a programmer. People don't meddle in code, and you can always use one of the following lines to get your way:

- That's is not possible with the controls we are using
- I can change it, but it would take me two more weeks
- The flux capacitor in the Holyfield membrane would cause the program to force an abnormal response pattern, and you wouldn't want that, would you?

You know, you think option three would work in design. "Creating a dimensional negative space can enhance the hierarchy of your main calls to action, thereby enhancing readability at the same time as utilizing the best standards practice of inversion of contextual intent."

They just say "whatever, make it brown, stupid."

What is that?

Fortunately, the other 90% of my job is pretty much answering a question with, "Well, the first thing I did was" and then people hanging up or walking away because they don't want to hear the rest.