I Was Just Opening My Email.

The trouble with a creative mind is that it never really clocks out.

I was just opening my email.

That’s all. No client deadline. No creative brief. No assignment waiting on my desk.

Just an ordinary morning, going through messages, when I came across an email about the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Their slogan was STARS ALIGN.

Good concept. Hollywood stars. Athletic stars. The city of dreams meeting the world’s biggest sporting stage. There’s plenty to work with.

And then I saw the typography.

Oh, dear.

The word STARS was rendered in a heavily stylized typeface that, to my eye, had no connection to Hollywood. ALIGN was thin, clean, and contemporary. Two typographic personalities occupying the same space without much of a relationship.

For a slogan about alignment, I found that rather amusing.

The Problem Wasn’t the Idea.

It was the execution.

I didn’t want to redesign their entire campaign. I liked the underlying concept. I even liked the thinner typography.

What I wanted was to make the words visually deliver the promise.

Hollywood has an instantly recognizable visual language. Marquees. Theater lights. Illuminated lettering. The excitement of a premiere.

So why not make STARS bold, uppercase, and filled with glowing marquee bulbs, while keeping ALIGN clean and elegant?

Now the two words have a relationship. One brings the Hollywood magic. The other gives it room to breathe.

And suddenly the stars actually align.

It’s Not Just Emails.

This happens to me all the time.

I’ll be driving down the street and see a billboard with typography so small that I wonder who they expect to read it.

A passenger with binoculars?

Someone sitting in traffic for three hours?

It’s a billboard. People are moving. You have seconds to communicate a message, not minutes to study it.

Yet there it is. A headline, a subhead, a paragraph, a website, a disclaimer, and possibly the company’s entire mission statement.

All fighting for attention from someone who’s supposed to be watching the road.

I find myself mentally removing half the copy, enlarging the headline, changing the hierarchy, and wondering why nobody asked the simplest question:

Can anyone actually read this?

And then there are the movies.

I can be watching a perfectly entertaining film when a title treatment, an awkward graphic, or a poorly considered piece of typography pulls me right out of the story.

Suddenly I’m no longer watching the movie. I’m art directing it.

Why that typeface? Why that size? Why put white lettering over the brightest part of the image? Why make the audience work so hard to understand something that should be effortless?

My roomie gets to watch the movie.

I get to watch the movie and critique the graphics department.

Lucky me.

Good Design Doesn’t Make People Work Harder.

This is something I’ve believed throughout my career.

Design isn’t just about making something attractive. It’s about making something communicate.

A billboard has to work from a moving car. A movie title has to establish a mood. A sign has to be understood before someone makes the wrong turn. An email has to communicate before the reader loses interest.

The medium matters.

The viewing distance matters.

The amount of time someone has to absorb the message matters.

And sometimes the most important design decision is what to leave out.

Less is more. And more is almost always less.

You can spend hours perfecting typography, but if the audience can’t read it, you’ve perfected the wrong thing.

Sometimes Showing Is Better Than Telling.

Back to my Olympic email.

I could have written a lengthy critique about visual hierarchy, typographic associations, contrast, and conceptual integration.

But here’s something I’ve learned over a career in creative direction: when you tell someone what’s wrong with their design, their first instinct may be to defend it.

When you show them another possibility, they can see it for themselves.

No lecture required.

So I made a visual, attached it to an email, and wrote:

“You need to fix that.”

Yes. That was pretty much the entire message.

I sent it off to LA28.

Was anyone expecting it? Absolutely not.

Will anyone respond? Who knows?

Will they use the idea? They can have at it.

I wasn’t trying to win an account. I wasn’t preparing a pitch. I wasn’t looking for a fee.

I simply saw a problem and enjoyed solving it.

The Creative Mind Doesn’t Have an Off Switch.

I think that’s something people outside creative professions don’t always understand.

We don’t necessarily sit down and decide to start designing. Sometimes the process begins before we even realize we’re doing it.

We notice relationships between shapes, colors, words, images, and ideas.

We recognize when something feels wrong, even before we’ve identified why.

And then the questions begin.

What if the headline were bigger?

What if the image were cropped differently?

What if the copy were shorter?

What if the entire idea could be communicated with one image instead of five?

It’s not always about finding fault. Often it’s simply about seeing possibilities.

And I don’t think I’d want to turn that off even if I could.

Some people drive past billboards and see advertisements.

I see unfinished design problems.

Some people watch a movie and enjoy the opening titles.

I wonder whether the kerning could have been better.

Some people open an email.

Apparently, I redesign the Olympics.

The Real Lesson?

Sometimes the best critique isn’t something you say. It’s something you show.

I didn’t change their slogan. I didn’t change their message. I just tried to make the design say what the words were already saying.

Maybe someone at LA28 will look at it. Maybe they’ll delete it. Maybe they’ll wonder who this woman is who sends unsolicited art direction before breakfast.

Whatever happens, I had fun.

And that’s the trouble with a creative mind.

You can’t turn it off.

Even when you’re just opening your