📈 TREE 560: Want to be great at your art? This graphic designer’s advice will blow your mind!

Clickbait is the new authenticity. Or something.

Did you see Friday’s big announcement?

Here’s a good sense-check for any piece of work:

Is it annoying?

Annoying jerks people out of your story. It mars the enjoyment of the music. It causes people to miss the point. It causes unnecessary offence in communication. It spoils the meal.

Annoying is different from controversial.

Annoying is not about style. Any style can be annoying. Annoying is the pebble in the shoe, the flatpack kit with a piece missing, the ugly garnish.

It could be annoying if it’s

too complicated
too clever
lacking clarity
lacking necessary detail
full of unnecessary ingredients
using decoration to hide flaws
taking the scenic route to the point when the scenery is basically west Texas
sloppy
smug
ignorant
relying on bad-faith arguments
the storytelling equivalent of that woman in the cinema when I was watching The English Patient who spent the entire film explaining the bleeding obvious to her friend
timid

You don’t need to run through a checklist, just get some fresh eyes and/or ears and ask, Is anything annoying about this thing I’m making? The fresh eyes and ears can be yours after some time away from the work or someone else’s. If you find something annoying, take the time to figure out why and fix it. The effort is worth it.

It’s a bank holiday here in the UK so let’s go with something easy and gorgeous.

Grow slowly
Jeff