Design for design's sake is all very well - but the text is important too, says Griselda Heppel
Exhibit A: exquisite torment provided by programme design I am not a great user of Facebook. If I post something and it gets a handful of likes and the odd comment, I’m doing well. So I was all the more surprised recently when something I put up sparked a whole host of likes, comments and discussion from a wide range of people, for whom I’d clearly touched a nerve. What can it have been been – political? No no, stay clear of all such, say I. The dreaded B word? As if. Enough misery about that as it is. Stygian gloom. (Photo by Damien Petit on Unsplash .) No . All I did was upload an example of a blight that has been seeping gradually into the printed world for the past few years, until now it affects every play, opera, concert and musical programme, magazine, brochure, exhibition text, restaurant menu and just about everything printed you can think of. Even websites aren’t immune. It is a kind of exquisite torment dreamt up by designers ...