Design as a second language

Collaborating with designers and illustrators is one of the best things about my job.  Putting the right words and pictures together provides a unique endorphin rush and sharing the creative process makes it twice as fun.  Having said that, it's also true that word and picture people don't always get each other. 

Spending some time with Adobe design software this summer has helped me understand why we don't always understand.

For one thing, we writers are finicky about our words.   Let's take the word "layer" for starters.  If I'm a writer and I see the word layer, I think of things stacked one on top of the other.   With Adobe software, several layers can occur in a single dimension.   For example, on a web site page, the headline may be one layer, the text another layer, a graphic another layer, etc.   A reader can see all of these things at once.   So how are they layers?    I have come to a place of acceptance on this issue, but for the record?  As a Virgo and a writer?  I don't think things sitting next to each other and not overlapping should be called layers.   I just don't.   You know?  If you want to call them layers, okay, but don't expect a writer to understand or accept this right away.  Hmmm...I guess I'm not in a place of acceptance just yet.

Here's another one:  rasterize.  How can you hear that word and not think of Bob Marley?   I have seen text get rasterized on a projection screen and I still don't know what it means.   Get up, stand up, and please somebody explain this to me.  I get warnings in Dreamweaver all the time that something has inadvertently been rasterized.   Is this a misdemeanor or a felony?   Isn't there another word that could communicate what this means?   

Also,  mask.  We had to type this sentence today while learning about Flash:  "A mask reveals."

Huh?  I had just learned that in Photoshop "a mask conceals."  What kind of topsy turvy world is this?   Let's track down the Phantom of the Opera.  Or the Lone Ranger.  I think they'll agree with Photoshop.

How about "tween?"  A person between 8 and 12, right, writers?   Not always.  Tweening is the heart of Flash animation.  The process that makes something move smoothly and gradually instead of all at once.

There are lots more funny words too, like ping (actually png) and swiff (actually swf).   Cool abbreviations, too, like "CSS" (Cascading Style Sheet).   That one reminds me of American Graffiti, when the street tough gets a ticket and says "file it under CS."   

Adobe is a secret language, and I know just enough to be dangerous.  And mouthy.

Finally, I must confess that in playing at being a web designer, I myself have referred to words as "type."  And if there are too many on a cramped page, they sometimes get on my nerves.   

Does this make me a creative without a country?   I hope not.

See you soon!